PONE-D-24-12806Beyond the Jab: Navigating Cultural Currents and Ecological Layers in East Coast Fever Vaccine Adoption in Rural Kenya.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Muthiru,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is a good in-depth study based on a remarkable amount of data on socio-ecological factors influencing the perception of ITM for ECF of farmers in Kenya. Having researchers with in-depth knowledge and understanding of the context is invaluable.

General comments:

The manuscript can be shortened by avoiding repetition, particularly in the introduction. Going from the general situation to the context in Kenya and then the particular study sites would improve readability.

What is the availability of vaccines in Kenya and can you mention how vaccines and awareness strategies usually reach the farmers? Livestock field officers, agrovet and self-administration, government interventions??

As Plos One is a journal with a readership from many different disciplines, it would strengthen the manuscript if certain terms were introduced (such as SEM, exotic cattle, grand breed etc.) better.

Please add a paragraph on the study team and some more info on data collection such as length of interviews. You mention that deep understanding of context reduced bias, so please explain who collected the data.

In the results section if would help if there were some quantitative indicators (i.e. majority of farmers, minority, some, a few, 23%) as to how many interviewees mentioned particular issues and what characteristics they had such as “village chief”, “small herd owner” etc. to allow the reader to judge the importance of their contribution.

Consider a sentence with a short summary statement after each section, such as “Mara is better for grazing during droughts, but provides more interaction with wildlife”.

Table captions should be clear enough to be understood standing alone. Therefore, please do not use abbreviations in the captions and add site of study.

Table 2: To improve readability, please put a line between all columns and maybe rename the column “participants” ”type of participant”. Aligning all text to the left would also make the table clearer.

Table 3: please do not use 130%. N=130 which should stand for 100%. Recalculate the percentages in the table accordingly.

Table 4: No abbreviations in the caption please. Line 314 it should read “heads of cattle”.

Table 5: why is it in colour? Continuity of format across all tables. Ormilo is heartworm, not heartwater, please correct. In the section for unpredictable, please change received to perceived.

The discussion has to be changed, so that referenced studies are not just included as numbers where they are part of a sentence. For each study used as part of a sentence, study site and relevant finding has to be spelled out.

Do your findings suggest that higher positioned farmers (chiefs, elders, larger herd owners) have more knowledge, better knowledge? This cannot be easily assumed from reading the results section, but can be clarified in the results section as mentioned above and picked up in the discussion.

Add a sentence on how influential community members could be used to lead and develop campaigns.

Specific comments:

Intro:

Please clarify:

Deaths are part of losses – reword

Typically HH with limited resources are affected – why?

Exotic cattle?

Economic losses – who and why?

Reduce repetition by starting with overall explanation of the complex interactions in East Africa and going to the specific situation in your study site. Make sure the described situation is more clearly applied to Kenya and your study population.

l. 289, replace “a few” with a number if possible.

L 357 last year is not “a few years ago”!

L 385 explain grade breed

L 399 to have diarrhea

L429 in 4 IDIs

L 600 explain ref 6 to complete the sentence like in l 609

L 618 punctuation

L 660-664 any comparison with other studies? Any reason why?

683 ECF tends to impact only smaller herds – why? Do you mean “the impact of ECF is felt stronger by owners of smaller herds”?

Reviewer #2: Beyond the Jab

General

Title of the paper; Wordy but unclear and not representative of the contents of the article; needs revision

As this is a qualitative study, it would be useful to describe the characteristics of the livestock keepers. For example, what kinds of people were mixed farmers or pastoralists and how are they differentiated in terms of age, education status? This is especially so because the paper clearly distinguishes between the perspectives of these different categories of farmers. What is mixed farming vs agro pastoralism?

In the introduction, the authors describe vaccination. It would be helpful to know if this disease is treatable and if the treatment is easily available? If treatment exists is it cheaper than the vaccines for example?

The study sites were selected based on contextual and ecological considerations. What were they? We do not see in this paper what this consideration for context and ecology provided in terms of enriching the data. For example, did those living close to wildlife areas discuss more the ecological aspects of SEM than those located in other areas?

In the results section, there is barely any contribution by the key informants to the study.

References missing, fullstops missing,

Not clear what the differentiation among the production systems is supposed to achieve? In the discussion section, it does not come up and in the results section barely.

82-83 Repetition as already stated in paragraph above

90-91 Already stated above

116 Narok South Subcounty?

117-118 Briefly explain the contextual and ecological considerations

124 Table 1; What is the difference between agro pastoral and mixed farmers?

134 Are the elders the same people described as community leaders?

138 Gendered duties not gender duties

163 KIIs You describe animal health care service providers (both county and private) then talk about animal health service providers in agro vets. How different is this latter category from “private practioners earlier mentioned? Were IDI participants different from FGD participants? Were the FGDs conducted according to the method of livestock farming ie pastoralists, agro pastoralists and mixed farmers? It appears so in the results but not mentioned in the methodology

180 Transition or translation?

184 Fullstop missing

247-248 Who were the livestock keepers who owned mixed breeds of cattle and thus more likely to adopt ITM? Were they people of a certain education or economic status?

249-250 See comment above 247-248 are describe if there is any correlation

259-260 The last part of this quote does not relate to the kind of exposure described in the two quotes. I see two different kinds of exposure: exposure to the vaccine and exposure to ECF and its impacts

354-360 This paragraph is unclear. Cases of ECF are reported to be few and to have occurred a few years ago but the quote is about ECF cases the year before the study? For clarity this could be compared with the occurrence of other diseases. For example, ECF might have occurred but maybe not as impactful as other livestock diseases?

385 what does “the grade breed of cows” mean? Exotic breeds?

454-455 The description is about the weather and not climate

470 the quotes above describe this. This part needs to be restructured for clarity and to avoid repetition

493-530 This section is unclear. I think it would be better to not narrow down to one issue at a time eg migrating to Mara vs Mau as this is a simplifying a complex issue. It seems that as exemplified by the majority in line 506-507 that the livestock keepers are describing the complexity of mitigating against the ECF disease and other diseases in a context of hunger and drought. The narrative here simplifies this issue unhelpfully.

534 Policy factors; how is the focus of vaccination campaigns and the information available a policy factor? These would be if in the introduction section it is clarified that the policy direction in the country is towards some livestock diseases and not others.

584-586 References?

608-609 Not included in the results but discussed?

609-611 Reference?

615 grade breeds of cattle? Meaning

621-623 Suggest rephrasing because pastoralists for clarity; do pastoralists know or expected to know the scientific evidence?

640-642 Reference?

689-691 are policy issues synonymous with public awareness campaigns?

708 Limitations after conclusion

719 Conclusion; Indeed, these issues are multifaced and there is complex interplay. However, the way they are discussed in this paper does not bring this out. It appears each factor is independent of the rest. This could have been mitigated through:

• More contextual insights of the study sites, livelihoods, study setting, why the different production methods were selected and what show value to the study,

• In the discussion section do not simply describe results and available literature but elucidate the interrelationships between and among the variables

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review ECF.docx

PONE-D-24-12806R1

Beyond the jab: unravelling the complexities of vaccine adoption for East Coast Fever in rural Kenya

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Muthiru,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 10 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Timothy Omara

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

********** 

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Very well revised manuscript and much improved. Comments of reviewers were addressed well. Some minor issues remain before it can be accepted:

1. There is a confusion between herds of cattle and heads of cattle.

A herd is a collection/group of animals. If someone has several herds, it means they have several distinct groups of cattle.

Heads of cattle are individual animals. Owning 5 heads of cattle means 5 animals.

Table 4 says “livestock keepers with fewer herd of cattle” – I think you mean heads of cattle.

L 362 in the quote you say - if a person has “800 herds of cattle” – I think you mean “800 heads of cattle”, i.e. 800 animals.

2. There is a confusing use of abbreviations for the disease and the vaccine against the disease.

For example, in L 107 FMD refers to the disease, while in table 4 FMD refers to the vaccine against the disease. Please go through the whole document and make sure this is clarified everywhere.

In Table 4 write: “existence of other livestock vaccines for FMD, CBPP …”

ECF vaccine or ITM vaccine? The Infection Treatment Method is a vaccine against ECF. Correct throughout so it is clear please.

Minor issues:

L 58 only define ITM once!

L 107 define FMD

L 128 – repetition in sentence – replace second livestock with animals.

L133 as above

L 201 remove “that”

L 204 add type of consent (written)

L 335 do you mean smaller herds?

L 376 correct repetition.

L 384 add “lower risk of EFC” “to other livestock vaccines for diseases considered prevalent”

L386 add “purchase it”

L 396 replace “flowed” with “spread”

L 427 replace “they” with “there”

L 447 what do you mean by “wildlife conservations” do you mean conservation areas?

L 455-458 revise sentence – makes no sense

L 564-581 What did the remaining 11% do? 14% prefer Mau, 75% prefer Mara and 11% prefer????

L 623 insert vaccines such as “for” FMD, CBPP….

Reviewer #2: This review is better and captures the comments earlier raised. It is important to demonstrate that the issues discussed are complex and intertwined so that the analysis is not too simplistic. Consider providing some relevant recommendations following this study.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review ECF v2.pdf

Beyond the jab: unravelling the complexities of vaccine adoption for East Coast Fever in rural Kenya

PONE-D-24-12806R2

Dear Dr. Muthiru,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Timothy Omara

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: