Browsing by Author "Mvena, Z.S.K."
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Item Achieving social protection for the elderly in Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania: a call for social institutions towards improving elderly service provision(Asian Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 2017) Malima, R.; Jeckoniah, J.N.; Mvena, Z.S.K.The elderly in Tanzania face social insecurity that put them at risk of great horizon of abuse, social exclusion, serious illness and abject poverty. Although, there are several social institutions addressing the risks facing the elderly in Tanzania, still the elderly’s adverse conditions remain unabated. This paper examined Social Institutions (SIs) and their respective roles in providing social security to the elderly in terms of food, health, shelter, clothing and income services. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design where a questionnaire survey, focus group discussions and key informant interviews were the main methods of data collection. The descriptive statistical analysis was employed to explore the distribution of socioeconomic characteristics and social protection. Content analyses approach was used to analyses the qualitative data. The findings show that: the family, Department of Social Welfare (DSW), Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) and religious institutions were the most active SIs providing social protection to the elderly. Elderly were unsatisfied with the SIs’social services provision as they narrowly focused on health and food. There was inadequately provision of other needy services. The study recommends to government to enhance the implementation of the social protection policies and guide service provision mechanisms among SIs. There Sis should adopt joint implementation of the social protection interventions to improve the scope of services for elderly welfares.Item Preliminary observations on factors responsible for long persistence and continued outbreaks of plague in Lushoto district, Tanzania(Elsevier, 1997-06-06) Kilonzo, B.S.; Mvena, Z.S.K.; Machangu, R.S.; Mbise, T.J.Human plague has been an important public health problem in Tanzania for over a century. Recorded outbreaks of the disease have been reported from various parts of Tanzania, including Iringa, Kagera, Singida, Mbulu, Arusha and Kilimanjaro since 1886. Since 1980 however, only Lushoto, Singida and Karatu districts have experienced outbreaks of the disease. Of these areas, Lushoto has disproportionately high incidences of the disease and this has persisted for nearly 17 years. Efforts to curb the disease through conventional methods, including control of vectors and reservoirs, chemotherapy and chemoprophylaxis, enforcement of sanitation improvement as well as health education, have been applied every year, but plague cases and deaths continue to occur in the area to date. During the period April 1980 to December 1996, a total of 6599 cases with 580 (8.8%) deaths were recorded. Biological factors, such as the presence of suitable rodent reservoirs, efficient flea vectors and plague bacillus, could be partly responsible for the long persistence and reccurence of the disease. Since such factors are also common in other plague foci where the disease has never been persistently recurrent, and where indigenous people are culturally different from those in Lushoto, it is assumed that socio-cultural factors play an important role as determinants of the disease in the latter district. This paper reports preliminary observations on socio-cultural, biological and environmental factors which are thought to be, at least partly, responsible for the long persistence and repeated outbreaks of plague in the district. These include traditional beliefs on the cause and health seeking behaviour for treatment of plague sleeping and food storage habits, large populations of rodents and fleas, and status of the immediate environment. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.