Goat 'condoms' save Kenyan herds

By Ruth Nesoba
BBC News, Nairobi

Goat wearing an olor
The olor is held in place by a rope or an elastic strap

Maasai herdsmen in Kenya have turned to an age-old contraceptive device, the "olor", to protect their precious goat herds from an ongoing drought.

The olor is made from cowhide or a square piece of plastic, and is tied around the belly of the male goat.

It prevents the bucks from mating with the female goats.

The herdsmen are using the device to limit the goat population and ensure there are not too many animals grazing on sparse vegetation.

"We don't want them to breed in this drought," says Mr Ole Ngoshoi Kipameto, a goat owner in Kajiado district.

Vital assets

The area, which is 80km (50 miles) from the capital, Nairobi, has received insufficient rainfall, making the landscape barren and forcing residents to move from place to place in search of pasture and water.

In the Maasai community, livestock are often people's only assets and sole means of survival.

"We tie this hide under the belly of the buck for three months. After that we remove it and then they can breed by November when the short rains come," Mr Kipameto says.

Herdsmen putting an olor on a goat
The olor saves employing separate herdsmen for male and female goats

The rectangular piece of cowhide is passed over the buck's head and front legs and secured under the belly in front of the hind legs with a rope or elastic strap.

"It looks like an apron," Mr Kipameto says.

Peter Ndirangu, the area livestock officer, says the olor is very effective.

"In the modern method, we advocate keeping the bucks separate from the breeding goats. But that is an added cost as you require two herdsmen - one for the bucks and one for the goats," he says.

"This [device] will play the part of a herdsman."

He says the device is very useful in keeping the herd numbers down and controlling when the goats give birth.

"If they give birth during harsh conditions like now, the mothers - the does - are going to be very weak, they're not going to feed their young ones properly," he says.

The device helps the herdsmen to restrict kidding to the period during and after the rains.

If the rains fall in October and November, the dry landscape will turn green again and the herdsmen will be able to settle with their livestock.

Until then, the herdsmen will have to employ the olor to protect their livestock and livelihood safe.

Those who do not use it could face a hefty fine if their bucks are found guilty of impregnating another herder's doe.

Sex Partners Get STD Alerts by E-mail

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TUESDAY, Oct. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Letting someone you've slept with know that you have inadvertently exposed them to a sexually transmitted disease can now be done with the click of a computer mouse.

A new report says 30,000 people have used an Internet service that allows them to alert their sex partners that they may have been infected with syphilis, gonorrhea, HIV or other diseases.

"This has been an innovative and effective way for us to enable people to communicate with their sex partners," said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, director of STD prevention and control services at the San Francisco Department of Health.

The inSPOT service, which was created in San Francisco in 2004, is now in place in several states, including Idaho, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, among others. According to the report, the service "has the potential to be a national and international resource."

"We know inSPOT works," Klausner said. "I see patients, they come in and say they've been notified [about having an STD], and their contact is through inSPOT."

Typically, health departments in the United States only notify the sexual partners of people with STDs if they might be infected with syphilis, Klausner said. Officials don't try to track down the partners of people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or diseases such as gonorrhea and chlamydia, he said.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health and a non-profit group surveyed gay men in 2004 and found that most didn't notify casual sex partners when they were diagnosed with an STD. But the report said men "overwhelmingly said that if there were an easy, convenient and anonymous way to inform their partners of their potential disease exposure, they would use it."

And so the inSPOT service was born, first as a service for gay men and then for anyone. Users visit a Web site and click through a form that allows them to submit the e-mail address of a sex partner and specify what disease or diseases the person may have been exposed to.

The person potentially exposed to an STD will then get an e-mail with the subject line, "E-card from a concerned friend re: your health via inSPOT."

People who send the messages can choose to be anonymous or include their name. They also get to choose images to appear on the e-cards, including a photo of the words "I'm so sorry" on a piece of paper.

"We're living in a new world of Internet communication," Klausner said. "Most people are online every day. This Internet communication tool affords people a way to send a message anonymously."

According to the new report, published in the October issue of PLoS Medicine, 15 percent of the e-cards in 2006 and 2007 warned recipients of gonorrhea infection. The percentages for other diseases were 15 percent for syphilis, 9 percent for HIV and 12 percent for chlamydia. Almost half of the cards warned of other diseases, including "crabs" and hepatitis.

Since 2004, 30,000 people have sent nearly 50,000 e-cards, the report said.

It's possible for people to use the messages to harass or frighten other people. There's no way to confirm that those who receive messages are actually in danger of infection. Still, there's little indication that people have abused the system, at least in San Francisco, Klausner said.

"I've probably gotten four e-mails from people who have been upset because they think they shouldn't have gotten this card, someone misused it," Klausner said. "They couldn't believe something this serious could so easily have the potential for misuse."

It's not clear if the notification service actually helps reduce sexually transmitted disease.

"The real test of this or any approach, including the traditional ones, is their effect on transmission," said Dr. Richard Rothenberg, a professor at Georgia State University's Institute of Public Health, who studies partner notification.

 

 
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