Table 6.

Summary of coping strategies reported among case study households.

Strategy	Highly vulnerable	Vulnerable	Least vulnerable
Borrowing	Rarely borrowed cash because they were not creditworthy (too poor to pay back); fear of borrowing and being unable to pay back leading to bad reputation & gossip	A common strategy because they had moderate assets but still not enough to rely more on other sources of credit like shops or private providers	Not common because they had other sources of credit but they could easily borrow if need arose.
	Amount of money borrowed was small (KES 10) because their friends were equally poor	Could borrow up to KES 100–200	Could easily borrow KES 5000 if need be because their friends were in a good economic situation
Credit from private providers	Not accessible by these households due to poverty	Could get treatment on credit but limited amounts depending on providers understanding of their economic status	Unlimited access to credit from providers because they were wealth, had permanent jobs & could easily pay by end of the month
Credit from shops	Occasionally but small amounts to buy drugs	Had access to credit but could be denied when they asked for large amounts	Could acquire all goods on credit until end of the month
Sale of assets (Goats & chickens)	Those that had assets sold them to pay for treatment or other needs but some had nothing to sell	Sold assets but usually to clear a debt at private providers.	Assets not sold to pay for treatment because there were other 'better' options
Sale of labor on farms	Preferred but not used due to drought	A possibility but drought limited its use	Unlikely for these households to use the strategy
Borrowing drugs	Preferred because they had no access to cash and were not required to pay back drugs	Not reported	Not reported
Sharing drugs	A common strategy when drugs are borrowed or bought	Common for households with many children	Reported when more than one child fell ill at the same time
Ignoring illness	A common strategy because they rarely had cash and access to other strategies was limited	Reported on two occasions because illnesses not perceived serious enough	Not reported