Invisible Epidemics: Gender, labour and the hidden burdens of trypanosomiasis and Rift Valley fever in rural communities in Kenya and their implications for future pandemics

Abstract

African trypanosomiasis and Rift Valley fever are zoonotic vector‑borne diseases that occur in remote rural areas where health and veterinary systems are weak or absent. Although outbreaks of both diseases have caused substantial economic losses and human and animal morbidity and mortality, their deeper impacts remain largely invisible. These conditions affect households holistically, calling for methodological and interventional approaches that move beyond biomedical framings toward integrated, multisectoral perspectives. Yet control efforts continue to focus narrowly on the “biomedical epidemic,” overlooking the slower, quieter “social and structural epidemic” that begins long before the first confirmed case.

This social epidemic is profoundly gendered. Women—primary caregivers for sick people and livestock, managers of household nutrition, and custodians of daily labour—absorb the earliest and most intense burdens. Their time, mobility, and well‑being are strained by multispecies illness, declining livestock productivity, and shifting household routines. These pressures occur within structural barriers: inadequate health and veterinary services, restrictive gender norms, and the invisibility of women’s labour in pastoral and non pastoral economies.

Using the iceberg analogy and case studies of both diseases, this seminar shows how gendered labour systems, colonial veterinary legacies, and governance failures create landscapes where epidemics are felt long before they are named. It argues that vector‑borne diseases begin not with infection but with structural vulnerability.

Places are limited and so any academic colleagues or students interested in attending in person must register here for a place.

More information about Professor Salome Bukachi