Abstract
In the United Kingdom, following the emergence of Seoul hantavirus in pet rat owners in 2012, public health authorities tried to communicate the risk of this zoonotic disease, but had limited success. To explore this lack of engagement with health advice, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with pet rat owners and analysed them using a grounded theory approach. The findings from these interviews suggest that rat owners construct their pets as different from wild rats, and by elevating the rat to the status of a pet, the powerful associations that rats have with dirt and disease are removed. Removing the rat from the contaminated outside world moves their pet rat from being ‘out of place’ to ‘in place’. A concept of ‘bounded purity’ keeps the rat protected within the home, allowing owners to interact with their pet, safe in the knowledge that it is clean and disease-free. Additionally, owners constructed a ‘hierarchy of purity’ for their pets, and it is on this structure of disease and risk that owners base their behaviour, not conventional biomedical models of disease.
Highlights
IntroductionIn the United Kingdom (UK) in 2012, public health authorities became aware of several cases of acute kidney injury associated with infection from a zoonotic, rodent-borne virus; hantavirus
In the United Kingdom (UK) in 2012, public health authorities became aware of several cases of acute kidney injury associated with infection from a zoonotic, rodent-borne virus; hantavirus.In the UK, the most common hantavirus is Seoul virus, the predominant hosts of which are brown rats (Rattus norvegicus)
It could be argued that wild rats possess ritual power; constantly transcending boundaries between the human and animal worlds has manifest in a creature that has a symbolically powerful association with dirt
Summary
In the United Kingdom (UK) in 2012, public health authorities became aware of several cases of acute kidney injury associated with infection from a zoonotic, rodent-borne virus; hantavirus. In the UK, the most common hantavirus is Seoul virus, the predominant hosts of which are brown rats (Rattus norvegicus). Hantaviruses in the UK were not thought to be of concern until Seoul virus was detected in a patient with acute kidney injury in 2012 [2]. Seoul virus was detected in another patient with acute kidney injury [3,4]. This patient had two pet rats (R. norvegicus), which were identified as the source of the infection. A national serosurveillance study determined an overall hantavirus seroprevalence of 34% in a sample of 79 pet rat owners, of which the majority (26/27) were seropositive for Seoul virus, and one had a weak positive reaction to Hantaan virus [5], a more severe
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