Perceptions of soil-eating and anaemia among pregnant women on the Kenyan coast

After a clinical study at Kilifi District hospital had shown a high prevale nce of geophagy among pregnant women, and a strong association of geophagy, anaemia and iron depletion, 52 pregnant women from the same hospital, and 4 traditional healers from the surroundings of Kilifi in Kenya were intervi ewed on the topic of soil-eating and its perceived causes and consequences. The findings were substantiated by results from an earlier anthropological study on maternal health and anaemia in the same study area. Most of the pregnant women (73%) ate soil regularly. They mainly ate the so il from walls of houses, and their estimated median daily ingestion was 41. 5 g. They described soil-eating as a predominantly female practice with str ong relations to fertility and reproduction. They made associations between soil-eating, the condition of the blood and certain bodily states: pregnan cy, lack of blood (upungufu iva damu), an illness called safura involving " weak" blood, and worms (minyolo). The relationships the women described between soil-eating and illness resem ble to some extent the causalities explored in biomedical research on soil- eating, anaemia and intestinal worm infections. However the women did not c onceptualise the issue in terms of the single causal links characteristic o f most scientific thought. Instead, they acknowledged the existence of mult iple links between phenomena which they observed in their own and other wom en's bodies. The women's ideas about soil-eating and their bodies shows the significance of both social and cultural context on the ways in which women derive know ledge from, and make sense of their bodily states. The cultural association s of soil-eating with blood, fertility and femininity exist alongside knowl edge of its links to illness. Our findings show that soil-eating is more th an just a physiologically induced behaviour; it is a rich cultural practice . (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.