Why livestock–and livestock losses–matter in developing countries: ILRI Film

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

What happens when farming families in poor countries lose their most important possessions?

Through the words of one African family, we learn in this short (4 minutes, 50 seconds) film, 'Why livestock?' from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) how livestock losses change lives.

By providing nourishing food, regular income, traction for ploughing, and manure to fertilize their croplands, farm animals are the foundation of some one billion lives and livelihoods.

‘Life is hard for us now without livestock,’ says this family.

Canadian vaccine research leader Lorne Babiuk joins the board of trustees of the International Livestock Research Institute

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI biotechnology director Vish Nene (left) and new ILRI board member Lorne Babiuk (right) at the November 2010 meeting of the ILRI Board of Trustees (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

Lorne Babiuk, a leader in Canadian vaccine research and vice-president for research at the University of Alberta, Canada, joined the board of trustees of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) this month (November 2010), when he attended his first board meeting, held at ILRI’s headquarters, in Nairobi, Kenya.

As vice-president of research, Babiuk facilitates the University of Alberta’s research, builds research consortia and strengthens the university’s international research links and collaborations. In 2010, the university opened the Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology, an institute created through a combined gift of $25-million from the Li Ka Shing (Canada) Foundation and $52.5-million from the Government of Alberta. The donation—the largest cash gift in the university’s history—will provide a state-of-the-art home to some of the world’s very best researchers in virus-based diseases. The new institute is working to attract significant private-sector collaboration with multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences companies.

Since 2005, Babiuk has also served as principal investigator on a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates ‘Grand Challenge in Global Health’ program, in which he and his team are developing vaccines against whooping cough (pertussis) in infants and young children, to be delivered in a single dose, without use of a needle. Children now need five doses of the vaccine to be fully protected and few children in the developing world get all the boosters.

Babiuk also supports Albertan research initiatives such as the Pan Albertan Neuroscience Network. As vice-president, he established an annual event that celebrates the breadth and depth of the university’s research in all disciplines—from social sciences to the arts, humanities, medical, agricultural, natural sciences and engineering. He has consistently fostered research that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries by, for example, supporting collaborations between social scientists and medical, agricultural and engineering researchers. And he helped develop the infrastructure needed by researchers in all fields to be more successful in individual and team grants.

Before moving to the University of Alberta, Babiuk built up a research institute—the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO), at the University of Saskatchewan—which became internationally recognized as a leader in new vaccine development. In 2005, he completed a US$19.4 million expansion of VIDO, and just before leaving VIDO, he assembled the funding needed to build a $140-million level-three bio-containment facility for work on infectious diseases.

Earlier in his career, Babiuk was part of a research consortium that developed and began testing a vaccine for SARS (sever acute respiratory syndrome) within 18 months of its outbreak in Canada. In addition to SARS and whooping cough, Babiuk has led research into the herpes virus and the respiratory syncitial virus and created a vaccine against rotavirus in calves, which allowed researchers later to develop a vaccine for rotavirus in children.

After completing a master’s degree in soil microbiology, Babiuk earned a PhD in virology from the University of British Columbia and a DSc from the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Veterinary Microbiology. He has mentored over 90 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and published over 500 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 100 book chapters or reviews. He holds 28 issued patents and has 18 patents pending.

Kenya study finds prototype tsetse-repellent technology does not sufficiently protect cattle under normal field conditions

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

Cattle fitted with tsetse-repellent dispensers suspended from neck collars were used to test the effectiveness of a prototype tsetse repellent in preventing tsetse fly bites (Photo credit: ILRI/Bett).

Recently published findings from a study done among Maasai livestock in Kenya to test whether repellents can successfully reduce tsetse fly bites in cattle show that tsetse-repellent technologies may have some success in typical field conditions but do not yet offer a viable alternative for controlling trypanosomosis in field-based livestock.

The study, ‘Field trial of a synthetic tsetse-repellent technology developed for the control of bovine trypanosomosis in Kenya,’ was the first to evaluate the use of a mobile tsetse repellent in the field. It was conducted between April 2005 and August 2006 in Nkuruman, in Kajiado District, and Nkineji, in Narok District.

Trypanosomosis is the most pervasive and serious cattle disease in sub-Saharan Africa. It kills between three and seven million cattle each year and costs farmers millions of dollars in lost production and treatment costs. The disease is transmitted mainly by blood-feeding tsetse flies that infect susceptible animals with the causative trypanosome parasite during their feeding. Other trypanosome parasites can infect humans, causing sleeping sickness, a disease that attacks the central nervous system.

Animal trypanosomosis is difficult to control because its spread is influenced by many factors, including the age, sex and colour of the cattle at risk as well as the herd size, its geographical area and climate. Adult and male cattle, for example, are more likely to contract the disease than calves and females. And tsetse flies prefer to take their feeds from animals with dark coats.

International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) researchers Bernard Bett, Tom Randolph and John McDermott participated in the evaluation, which was designed with the help of veteran African tsetse researchers Glyn Vale and John Hargrove, and Steve Torr of Greenwich University (UK). The evaluation involved 2000 cattle: 1000 formed the control group, while the other 1000 animals were fitted with tsetse-repellent dispensers suspended from neck collars. The effectiveness of the repellent was then monitored for 16 months.

The study stipulated at the outset that the repellent would be considered effective if it reduced the incidence of trypanosomosis by 50 percent or more in the repellent-treated animals versus the control animals. Failure to achieve this level of reduction would mean that the repellent technology was clearly not ‘a viable alternative to existing control techniques’.

Results from the trial showed that the technology reduces trypanosomosis infection rates only modestly. ‘The synthetic repellent reduced the incidence of the disease only by 18 percent,’ said Bett, the ILRI scientist who implemented the trial.

Bett went on to explain that the technology had been proposed for evaluation based on initial experiments using stationary cattle that suggested that the repellents could reduce infection rates by more than 80 percent. ‘Under typical field conditions, however,’ said Bett, ‘the repellent did not provide adequate levels of protection, so we are recommending that it not be considered for further commercial development at this point.’

That the effectiveness of the repellent in the field was lower than expected could be attributed to both the fragile nature of the repellent dispensers, which, sensitive to abrasions, often leaked, as well as the repellent itself. Tsetse flies, especially hungry ones, will alight even on animals that smell bad to them. This is why people, for example, whose odour should put off tsetse flies, still get bitten by them.

‘The earlier experiments might have also overestimated the benefit of the technology,’ said Bett. ‘Those initial experiments evaluated the reduction in numbers of flies feeding on tethered cattle; other flies, however, could bite quickly without feeding and still transmit the disease before the repellent drives them away. In addition, while flies mainly use odour to find a stationary cow, they use vision more than odour to guide them to moving animals, such as those in the pastoralist herds used in the field trial.’

The study found that many variables determine the effectiveness of the repellent technology. Among these are changes in grazing (during the dry season, herders tend to move their stock to pastures with higher densities of tsetse) and herd sizes (the larger the herd, the lesser are the chances that an individual animal within the herd will be bitten). Trypanosomosis incidence also differed in the two test districts. While cattle were the preferred hosts for the flies in Narok, the cattle in Kajiado came fifth in fly preference—after warthog, elephant, zebra and buffalo—which reduced the effectiveness of the repellent worn by the cattle.

Bett says that ‘the results of this study show that the tsetse-repellent technologies currently proposed are unlikely to be useful replacements of existing methods of controlling trypanosomosis.’ These include keeping indigenous ‘trypanotolerant’ cattle breeds, which can tolerate trypanosome infections without getting sick; treating sick animals with trypanocidal drugs to cure them of the disease; introducing sterile tsetse flies into an area to reduce its tsetse population; and controlling tsetse populations using pyrethrum-based insecticides.’

The findings of this study should help scientists improve their research on methods for controlling tsetse fly populations and the trypanosomosis they spread. ‘In the short term, however,’ says Bett, ‘we need to continue sensitizing livestock keepers on how to best use the existing control methods.’

‘We also urgently need to develop integrated strategies for controlling the fly and disease,’ concludes Bett, ‘so that we stop over-relying on popular interventions, such as regularly treating cattle with trypanocides, which will inevitably lead to drug resistance in the trypanosome parasites.’

—

Read the complete findings of the evaluation on this link http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2010.09.001

This blog entry by Tezira Lore, a communication specialist with ILRI’s Market Opportunities Theme, compares findings of this field trial with findings of other ILRI studies in typanosomosis.

Why technical breakthroughs matter: They helped drive a cattle plague to extinction

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Tom Olaka, a community animal health worker in Karamajong, northern Uganda, was part of a vaccination campaign in remote areas of the Horn of Africa that drove the cattle plague rinderpest to extinction in 2010 (photo credit: Christine Jost).

A superb example of why technical breakthroughs matter is reported in the current issue (22 October 2010) of the leading science journal, Science.

The eradication of rinderpest from the face of the earth, probably the most remarkable achievement in the history of veterinary science, is a milestone expected to be announced in mid-2011 pending a review of final official disease status reports from a handful of countries to the World Organisation for Animal Health.

A plague of cattle and wild ungulates, rinderpest would not have been eradicated without such a technical breakthrough. This was the development of an improved vaccine that did not require a 'cold chain' and thus could be administered in some of the most inhospitable regions in the Horn of Africa, where the virus was able to persist due to lack of vaccination campaigns in these hotspots.

Rinderpest is a viral livestock disease that has afflicted Europe, Asia and Africa for centuries. It killed more than 90 per cent of the domesticated animals, as well as untold numbers of people and plains game, in Africa at the turn of the 19th century, a devastation so complete that its impacts are still felt today, more than a century later. The last-known outbreak of rinderpest occurred in Kenya in 2001.

The key technical breakthrough in this effort involved development of an improved vaccine against rinderpest. The original vaccine was developed at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) laboratories. In 1990, Jeffrey Mariner, a veterinary epidemiologist who at that time was at the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and working with the Africa Union-Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), improved the vaccine by producing a thermostable version that did not require refrigeration up to the point of use. This allowed vets and technicians to backpack the vaccine into remote war-torn areas, where vet services had broken down and international agencies dared not send personnel. The AU-IBAR led the Pan-African Rinderpest Campaign, which coordinated the efforts that resulted in the eventual eradication of rinderpest from Africa.

Now working in the Nairobi laboratories of at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Mariner says that just as important as this technological advance was getting the development community to begin to address how people work together. Mariner and his colleagues at AU-IBAR themselves took three innovations as lessons from the rinderpest eradication campaign: (1) community-based vaccination programs, (2) participatory surveillance systems based on local knowledge, and (3) optimized control strategies that target high-risk communities through.

‘We must examine issues from the perspective of each group of stakeholders involved and visualize how proposed changes would affect them,’ says Mariner. ‘The power relationships of the groups also need to be considered. Advocates for change must then craft a new vision for how the various stakeholder groups will function that is sufficiently exciting to get people to risk change.’

Excerpts from the Science article, by Dennis Normille, follow.
'Rinderpest, an infectious disease that has decimated cattle and devastated their keepers for millennia, is gone. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced on 14 October in Rome that a 16-year eradication effort has succeeded and fieldwork has ended.

'“This is the first time that an animal disease is being eradicated in the world and the second disease in human history after smallpox,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said in his World Food Day address in Rome the next day.

'“It is probably the most remarkable achievement in the history of veterinary science,” says Peter Roeder, a British veterinarian involved with FAO’s Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme (GREP) from its launch in 1994 until he retired in 2007. For the veterinarians who participated in the effort, the achievement is particularly poignant. . . .

'One formality remains: The Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) still must complete the certification of a handful of countries as rinderpest free. OIE is likely to adopt an official declaration recognizing the demise of the disease at its May assembly. Meanwhile, animal-disease fighters have already been applying lessons learned from the rinderpest campaign and pondering which animal disease might be the next target for eradication.

'Although nearly forgotten in much of the West, as recently as the early 1900s, outbreaks of rinderpest—from the German for “cattle plague”—regularly ravaged cattle herds across Eurasia, often claiming one-third of the calves in any herd. The virus, a relative of those that cause canine distemper and human measles, spreads through exhaled droplets and feces of sick animals, causing fever, diarrhea, dehydration, and death in a matter of days. It primarily affects young animals; those that survive an infection are immune for life.

'When the virus hit previously unexposed herds, the impact was horrific. In less than a decade after the virus was inadvertently introduced to the horn of Africa in 1889, it spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, killing 90% of the cattle and a large proportion of domestic oxen used for plowing and decimating wild buffalo, giraffe, and wildebeest populations. With herding, farming, and hunting devastated, famine claimed an estimated one-third of the population of Ethiopia and two-thirds of the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania. . . .

'In 1994, when rinderpest was entrenched in central Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and a swath stretching from Turkey through India and to Sri Lanka, FAO brought together three regional rinderpest-control programs into GREP and set the goal of eliminating the disease by 2010. . . .

'The key technical breakthrough was the recognition that the virus was re-emerging from just a handful of reservoirs that could be the targets of intensive surveillance and vaccination campaigns. In 1990, Jeffrey Mariner, then at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine (now the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine), had developed an improved vaccine that did not require refrigeration up to the point of use. This allowed vets and technicians to backpack vaccine into remote areas. One of the reservoirs was in the heart of war-torn eastern Africa, where vet services had broken down and international agencies dared not send personnel. GREP relied on local pastoralists to track the disease and on trained community animal health workers to administer the vaccine to quell outbreaks.

'. . . The virus was last detected in 2001 in wild buffaloes in Meru National Park in Kenya, on the edge of the Somali ecosystem.

'What comes next? Some veterinary experts question whether the international community is ready to take on another massive eradication campaign, but one disease mentioned as a possible eradication target is peste des petites ruminants (PPR), which is highly contagious and lethal among sheep and goats. Related to the rinderpest virus, the PPR virus has long circulated in central Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent and has recently spread to Morocco. . . .'

ILRI's Jeff Mariner is now working on an improved vaccine for this disease.

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Read the whole article at Science (registration needed to read the full article): Rinderpest, deadly for cattle, joins smallpox as a vanquished disease, 22 October 2010.

To find out what the eradication of rinderpest means for livestock farmers around the world, listen to the following interview featuring John McDermott, ILRI's deputy director general.

Assessing animal diseases: New paper urges use of value chain analysis and information economics to understand animal disease impacts

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

Cows standing in the compound after grazing in Chokwe, Mozambique. A new study calls for improved integration between epidemiology and economics to understand economic and poverty impacts of animal diseases (photo credit: ILRI/Mann)

A new study by researchers working with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is recommending use of ‘bottom-up’ approaches that use the strengths offered by value chain analysis and information economics in assessing the impacts of animal diseases and their interaction with socio-economic and institutional factors in developing countries.

Authors Karl Rich, from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and on joint appointment with ILRI and Brian Perry, an honorary professor of veterinary medicine at the Universities of Edinburgh and Pretoria and formerly a leader of ILRI’s research team on animal health and food safety for trade, say economists and epidemiologists need to work more closely in assessing the impact of animal diseases. They recommend use of ‘participatory disease surveillance’ approaches that feature models of disease assessment that consider the context in which animal diseases occur and how they affect markets, livelihoods and poverty reduction especially in developing countries where livestock serve diverse commercial and cultural roles which affect disease control efforts.

In a paper ‘The economic and poverty impacts of animal diseases in developing countries: New roles, new demands for economics and epidemiology’ published in the 15 September 2010, online edition of the Preventative Veterinary Medicine journal, the scientists say both value chain analysis and information economics hold particular promise and relevance towards animal disease impact assessment.

They note that ‘normative’ approaches that try to guide how agents affected by diseases should behave (for example by emphasizing elimination of disease while relegating issues of disease mitigation, equity, gender and poverty) have had limited success in reducing poverty and disease prevalence in developing countries. The scientists suggest that new models that consider the context decision makers, farmers and value chain actors face in the event of animal disease outbreaks and what they actually do (not only what they should do) will contribute to more effective pro-poor policymaking.

The paper also recommends harmonizing divergent incentives among different stakeholders in developing countries noting that, for example, integrating the views of political economy and institutions engaged in animal health research will help to focus more broadly and systematically on incentives and the behaviour of those institutions and political actors, thereby helping researchers to better understand the economic impact of diseases.

The paper reviews the livelihoods and poverty impacts of animal diseases in the developing world, with a focus on Rift Valley fever, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and foot and mouth disease. The paper also analyses the effects of these diseases through a poverty and value chains perspective and highlights ways that lessons from these perspectives can be aligned with disease control initiatives.

Rift Valley fever outbreaks are common in eastern Africa, especially after heavy rains, which lead to rises in numbers of mosquitoes that spread this viral zoonotic disease. Rift Valley fever affects cattle, sheep, goats and camels but also infects and kills humans. A recent outbreak of the disease between 2006 and 2007 killed more than 100 people in Kenya and led to significant loss of animals and livelihoods, especially for pastoralist livestock keepers.

Rich and Perry say the response of different stakeholders to diseases is based on their unique circumstances and constraints and their incentive for compliance also depends on such contexts. Their paper stresses the importance of ‘improved integration between epidemiology of disease and its relationships with economic behaviour.’

The authors call for a holistic look at the livestock sector as a system of interacting actors, each with their own values and constraints. They say that frameworks such as those offered by value chains can help identify the impacts that animal diseases generate. The value chain framework’s emphasis on relationships, characteristics and dynamics among actors, can help identify not only who is impacted by animal disease but also how and why they are affected and how different actors might behave and adjust in response to disease outbreaks.

To read the complete paper and its recommendation, click here

This piece is adapted from an original story posted on the Market Opportunities Digest blog written by Tezira Lore, communications specialist for ILRI’s Markets Theme.

Market opportunities for poor Ugandan livestock farmers mapped for first time

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

This map from Mapping a Better Future combines poverty rates with milk production data and shows only the poverty rates for administrative areas with milk surplus. By knowing which areas display both high poverty rate and milk surplus, Uganda’s leaders can better provide market opportunities for poorer dairy farmers and target infrastructure investments.

The percentage of the population living below the poverty line is shown from
>dark green (lowest) to > light green (low) to > beige (medium) to > tan (high) to > dark brown (highest).
Gray areas = no data
White areas = outside milk surplus area
Diagonal blue lines = major national parks and wildlife reserves (over 50,000 ha)

To see the original of this and other maps, go here.

A new  set of maps illustrating possible market  opportunities for Uganda’s livestock farmers living  in poverty is being unveiled today. The maps compare for the first time  2005 poverty levels with livestock data from the  2002 population and housing census and the 2008  national livestock census.

‘Seven out of ten households in Uganda own  livestock, making it an integral part of Ugandans’  diet, culture and income,’ said Hon. Hope R. Mwesigye, Ugandan Minister of Agriculture,  Animal Industry and Fisheries and co-author of  Mapping a Better Future: Spatial Analysis and  Pro-Poor Livestock Strategies in Uganda. ‘The  maps are meant to guide the government’s future  investments to reduce poverty while strengthening the livestock sector.’

Hon. Syda N.M. Bbumba, Uganda Minister of  Finance, Planning and Economic Development,  said, ‘Examining the spatial relationships between  poverty, livestock systems, location of livestock  services such as dairy cooling plants, and livestock  disease hotspots can provide new evidence-based  information to help craft more effective  investments and poverty reduction efforts.

While Uganda’s total agricultural output has declined, livestock figures have increased dramatically in the last  decade due to strong domestic and regional demand for livestock products, according to the report.

‘Increased livestock production carries both economic opportunities for Ugandans and greater risk for  transmission of animal diseases,’ said Nicholas Kauta, Commissioner of Livestock Health and Entomology at  the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries. ‘The maps included in this report will help Uganda’s leaders understand market opportunities and, at the same time, target at-risk areas for disease  outbreaks with appropriate health intervention plans.’

For instance, maps showing milk surplus and deficit areas can highlight geographic differences in market  opportunities for poor dairy farmers. According to the maps in the report, about 3.5 million people live in  sub-counties identified as producing more milk than their residents consume, and approximately 0.8 million poor people live in areas where the demand for milk is greater than supply. This information can help  policymakers, dairy researchers and development agencies gauge market opportunities and invest in  infrastructure where it is needed the most.

‘By combining social data and livestock information and analyzing the map overlays, decision-makers from  different sectors can work together to identify solutions to complex problems facing communities such as  diseases that affect both people and livestock,’ said Norbert Henninger, senior associate at the World Resources Institute and co-author  of the report.

John B. Male-Mukasa, executive director of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, said, ‘Uganda’s government  acknowledges the importance of livestock to the nation’s economic development and food security, and as  part of its 2010–2015 National Development Plan, it plans to invest in improved livestock breeds, water infrastructure and livestock land management. The maps in this report will be useful in identifying the  regions where investment is needed most dearly.’

Mapping a Better Future is the third installment in a series of publications using maps and spatial analysis to  reduce poverty in Uganda, following two previous reports that targeted wetlands and water and sanitation.

Download the publication here.

The following institutions were involved in the production of this publication.

The Uganda Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries provides an  enabling environment in which a profitable, competitive, dynamic and sustainable agricultural and agro-industrial  sector can develop.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics is the principal data-collecting, -processing, -analyzing, and - disseminating agency responsible for coordinating and supervising the National Statistical System.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to  defeat hunger. Besides acting as a neutral forum to negotiate agreements and debate policy, FAO is also a  source of knowledge and information.

The International Livestock Research Institute works at the crossroads of livestock and  poverty, bringing high-quality science and capacity-building to bear on poverty reduction and sustainable  development.

The World Resources Institute is an environmental think tank that goes beyond research to  find practical ways to protect the earth and improve people’s lives.

Tool for assessing risks to Rift Valley fever outbreaks in the Horn of Africa published

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

A young boy herds a flock of goats on the road to Wajir from Garissa in northeastern Kenya, an area that has experienced outbreaks of Rift Valley fever, which kills both livestock and people (photo by IRIN).

Rift Valley fever occurs in East Africa as explosive outbreaks separated by prolonged periods of 8 to 10 years when the disease disappears. The episodic nature of the disease and the rapid evolution of outbreaks create special challenges for controlling the disease. Following 2006/2007 Rift Valley fever outbreaks in East Africa, decision-makers assembled their collective experiences in the form of a risk-based decision-support tool to help guide responses in future emergencies. Because a series of natural events are indicative of an increasing risk of an outbreak of Rift Valley fever, actions should be matched to this evolving risk profile. The decision-support tool is a living document written through stakeholder input.

At a workshop convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and held at ILRI's headquarters, in Nairobi, Kenya, in late March 2008, participants generated the initial material, which was then compiled and edited into the first draft of the decision-support tool.

The first draft of the decision-support tool was then exposed to critical review by close to 100 participants at the United States Centers for Disease Control's Rift Valley Fever Workshop 2008, 'Scientific pathways toward public health prevention and response,' held in Nairobi in early May 2008. A small group drawn from participants at the initial workshop reviewed the revised document at a meeting held at ILRI in September 2008 and final changes recommended by them have been incorporated into this version.

This decision-support tool has been reviewed and approved by the FAO's Emergency Center for Transboundary Animal Diseases of the Regional Animal Health Center, Nairobi. The tool was developed with stakeholders under a project managed by ILRI and funded by the FAO Emergency Coordination Office for Africa.

Read more: The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Decision-support tool for prevention and control of Rift Valley fever epizootics in the Greater Horn of Africa, 2010.

Traditional knowledge key to managing outbreaks of Rift Valley fever: Study points out important role livestock keepers play in veterinary surveillance

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

Orma Boran cattle crossing a river in Kenya. Cattle and people both can be infected with Rift Valley fever (Photo credit: R Dolan)

Livestock researchers say the traditional knowledge of local pastoralists in East Africa needs to be included in programs to better control livestock diseases in the region.

Somali and Maasai herder early warning systems both were key in identifying the risk factors and symptoms of Rift Valley fever in an outbreak in 2006/7.

Rift Valley fever is an acute viral zoonosis spread by mosquitoes. It primarily affects domestic livestock such as cattle, camels, sheep and goats, but can also infect, and kill, people, especially those handling infected animals.

First isolated in humans in the Rift Valley region of Kenya in 1930, until the 1970s Rift Valley fever was reported mainly in southern and eastern Africa, primarily Kenya, where it was considered an animal disease, despite sporadic human cases. But after the 1970s, explosive outbreaks occurred in human populations throughout Africa, Indian Ocean states and the Arabian Peninsula. Epidemics in Egypt in 1977/8 and in Kenya in 1997/8 each killed several hundred people. Another outbreak in Kenya in 2006/7 killed more than 100 people.

In East Africa, Rift Valley fever outbreaks have coincided with heavy rainfall and local flooding, which can lead to expansion of mosquito populations. In an assessment made to review lessons from the 2006/7 outbreak in East Africa carried out by scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Kenyan and Tanzanian departments of veterinary services, researchers found that Somali pastoralists of northeastern Kenya accurately assessed the likelihood of an outbreak based on their assessments of key risk factors, and they did so long before veterinary and public health interventions began. The study also looked at the experiences of Maasai herders of northern Tanzania, who accurately recognized symptoms such as high abortion rates as indicating the presence of the infection in their herds.

Among the environmental factors the Somali communities noticed as likely to lead to an outbreak is an increase in rainfall (usually accompanied by floods) and an increase in mosquitoes. Both preceded the 2006/7 outbreak and had been present in the last outbreak of Rift Valley fever in the region in 1997/8. The Somalis also accurately associated a ‘bloody nose’, or Sandik, in their animals with Rift Valley fever.

The role of this traditional knowledge in predicting Rift Valley fever is the subject of a paper, ‘Epidemiological assessment of the Rift Valley fever outbreak in Kenya and Tanzania in 2006 and 2007’, published in the August 2010 supplement of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

The authors say that Somali pastoralists are particularly able to predict not only the symptoms of Rift Valley fever in their animals but also the likelihood of an outbreak of the disease. Indeed, observations by local communities in risk-prone areas were often more timely and definitive than the global early warning systems in use at the time of the 2006/7 outbreak.

‘Timely outbreak response requires effective early warning and surveillance systems. This study points out the important role that livestock keepers can play in veterinary surveillance,’ the authors say.

As a result of the experiences of the 2007 outbreak, the authors recommend adopting new forecasting models and surveillance systems ‘that place more emphasis on climatic information [to] increase the lead time before events and enhance the ability of decision-makers to take timely action.’

The researchers also say that outbreaks of Rift Valley fever could be managed better if disease control workers were able to run models that combined economic with epidemiologic factors. With such models, they could better determine the benefits of implementing various disease surveillance and control methods, and the best times to implement each method selected for each circumstance.

This piece is adapted from the article New journal article: An assessment of the regional and national socio-economic impacts of the 2007 Rift Valley fever outbreak in Kenya by Tezira Lore, communications specialist for ILRI’s Markets Theme.

To read the complete report and its recommendations please visit http://www.ajtmh.org/cgi/content/abstract/83/2_Suppl/65/

A related ILRI news article addresses the full effects of the 2006/7 Rift Valley fever outbreak in East Africa, including the national and regional socioeconomic impacts of the outbreak and its effects on human and animal health.

Assessing the full costs of livestock disease: The case of the 2007 outbreak of Rift Valley fever in Kenya

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Livestock market in Garissa, in northeastern Kenya. Closure of the cattle market and disruption of cross-border cattle trade with Somalia due to outbreaks of livestock disease can worsen food insecurity among the pastoralists and agropastoralists on both sides of the border. (Photo credit: Tze-Yun Soh)

Rift Valley fever is a mosquito-transmitted zoonotic disease that harms both human health and livestock production. It can also induce large, often overlooked, economic losses among many other stakeholders in the livestock marketing chain.

A new paper published by ILRI scientists Karl Rich and Francis Wanyoike assesses and quantifies the multi-dimensional socio-economic impacts of a 2007 outbreak of Rift Valley fever in Kenya. The study is based on a rapid assessment of livestock value chains in the northeast part of the country and a national macroeconomic analysis. As would be expected, the study results show losses among producers in food security and incomes. But the researchers also found significant losses occurred among other downstream actors in the value chain, including livestock traders, slaughterhouses, casual labourers, and butchers, as well as among those in non-agricultural sectors. To better inform policy and decision making during animal health emergencies, the authors argue that we should widen our focus to include analyses that address the multitude of economic losses resulting from an animal disease.

The authors write:

‘Rift Valley fever has had significant impacts on human and animal health alike in East Africa and the Middle East. Past outbreaks in South Africa (1951), Egypt (1977/78), Kenya (1997), and Saudi Arabia (1998–2000) resulted in the cumulative loss of thousands of human lives. The 2000 outbreak in Saudi Arabia led to the imposition of trade bans of live animals from the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya) that had devastating economic impacts: one study estimated that total economic value-added in the Somali region of Ethiopia fell by US$132 million because of these trade bans, a 42% reduction compared with normal years . . . .

‘In 2007, Rift Valley fever returned to East Africa, impacting both Kenya and Tanzania. Specifically hard hit by this latest outbreak were the pastoral communities of the northeastern part of Kenya. In this region, livestock serve an important livelihood function for pastoralists, with livestock trade representing over 90% of pastoral incomes . . . . Moreover, northeastern Kenya has the highest incidence of poverty within Kenya, with poverty rates of approximately 70% in 2004 . . . .

‘An overlooked component in the socio-economic analysis of animal diseases is the multiplicity of stakeholders that are affected. Rift Valley fever does not just affect producers, but also impacts a host of other service providers within the livestock supply chain and other parts of the larger economy. Cumulatively, these downstream impacts can often dwarf the impacts of the disease at the farm level, but public policy tends to concentrate primarily on losses accruing to producers. The failure to capture these diverse impacts may have important implications on the evolution and control of disease that may accentuate its impact.

‘The 2007 Rift Valley fever outbreak in Kenya had wide-ranging impacts on the livestock sector and other segments of the economy that are often overlooked in the analysis of animal disease. These impacts included production impacts, employment losses (particularly for casual labor), and a reduction in operating capital among slaughterhouses and butchers that slowed the recovery of the livestock sector once the disease had abated. On a macroeconomic basis, we estimated that Rift Valley fever induced losses of over Ksh 2.1 billion (US$32 million) on the Kenyan economy, based on its negative impacts on agriculture and other sectors (transport, services, etc.) alike.’

Read more: An Assessment of the Regional and National Socio-Economic Impacts of the 2007 Rift Valley Fever Outbreak in Kenya, by Karl Rich and Francis Wanyoike. Rich is on joint appointment with ILRI and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, in Oslo. ILRI researcher Wanyoike is based in Nairobi. Their paper is published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 83(Suppl 2), 2010, pp. 52–57.

Reducing the risks of bird flu in poor communities in Indonesia

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Poultry seller in Indonesia (photo by ILRI / C Jost)

To reduce risks faced by poor communities to outbreaks of bird flu (highly pathogenic avian influenza), experts in Indonesia say poultry farmers, traders and transporters, as well as the general public, need to be better educated about the disease and its control. They also recommend strengthening the capacity of Indonesia's institutions to control the country's bird flu pandemic.

These recommendations were made during a workshop held in Bogor, Indonesia, 5–6 August 2010, that concludes the research activities of an Indonesian component of a project to develop strategies for reducing the risks of bird flu among poor communities in countries of Asia and Africa.

The two-year project is supported by the UK Department for International Development and is implemented in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.

About 40 participants attended the Bogor workshop, some drawn from the key partners in the project: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and the Royal Veterinary College. Other participants represented a variety of stakeholders in better control of bird flu in poor communities. These included local universities such as Gadjah Mada University, in Yogyakarta, and Bogor Agricultural University; local poultry farmer groups and members of the poultry industry; and international researchers and donor agents conducting similar projects in the country.

The workshop participants made 5 key recommendations regarding better control of bird flu in poor communities:

widen uptake of basic biosecurity measures through education
provide targeted subsidies
develop professional actor associations with certification schemes
find ways to encourage prompt reporting of outbreaks of bird flu
build public awareness campaigns to promote changes in public behaviour that reduce risks to the disease

Ad hoc institutions set up after the initial outbreaks of bird flu in the country played a key role in the subsequent dissemination of information on bird flu. The Indonesia National Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness is one such institution, which usefully brought together animal and human health authorities in a joint response to the pandemic. The workshop members recommended that these institutions be integrated into relevant government departments throughout the country’s administrative units. These recommendations will be further developed in consultation with the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture.

This piece is adapted from an original story posted on the Market Opportunities Digest blog drafted by ILRI staff members Fred Unger and Bernard Bett, scientific members of the project who attended the Bogor workshop, and Tezira Lore, communications specialist for ILRI's Markets Theme.

Read more on the website of the collaborative research project: Pro-poor HPAI Risk Reduction

Need for delivery networks for East Coast fever vaccine highlighted in audio interview

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

East Coast fever is a major livestock disease in eastern, central and southern Africa. Transmitted by ticks infected with a protozoan parasite (Theileria parva), it kills over 1 million animals each year, damaging livelihoods of poor livestock keepers and farmers in 11 countries. Researchers from organizations such as the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are working to find innovative ways to protect African livestock against this and other ‘orphan’ livestock diseases.

One of the successes in the efforts to fight East Coast fever has been the development of a ‘live’ vaccine, which includes the whole parasite, weakened so as not to cause severe disease thatcame after over 30 years of research by organizations including ILRI and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. This long-term research was funded by UK Department for International Development and other donors of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. The vaccine is now registered in Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania and its widespread use is being promoted so that it can give protection to the animals on which many poor people in these countries depend.

In the following audio interview, John McDermott, Deputy Director General-Research at ILRI, speaks in Nairobi of the need ‘to develop networks that can distribute and deliver’ the vaccine to those who need it, which should encourage its widespread use. This interview, produced in July 2010 by AFGAX Radio (http://www.agfax.net), also shares the expectations of a veterinarian from Kenya and a farmer from Tanzania of how the vaccine will help livestock keepers.

To listen to the interview, visit: http://www.agfax.net/radio/detail.php?i=353

More information about the East Coast fever live vaccine is available in the following article.

Edinburgh-Wellcome-ILRI project addresses neglected zoonotic diseases in western Kenya

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

‘Neglected diseases are diseases of neglected peoples’—Eric Fèvre

Animals and people live close together throughout the developing world. Chickens, goats, pigs, cows and other farmed animals range freely in and out of rural homesteads as families go about their daily lives. This space-sharing by people and their livestock makes good use of the small plots of land managed by the world’s many smallholder farmers; food that might otherwise go to waste can be fed to the animals, for example, while animal manure feeds the cropland by fertilizing it. Most of the world’s smallholder farmers depend on their animals for milk, meat and eggs to feed their families, with the surplus generating much-needed regular household income.

However, such close proximity to their animals puts many people at risk of ‘zoonotic’ diseases, which are those transmitted between people and animals. Remarkably, more than 60% of all human diseases are infections they can get from animals and more than 70% of today’s emerging diseases, such as bird flu, are zoonotic.

Because human and animal health are particularly intertwined in poor countries where people and livestock live in such close proximity, efforts to improve human health in the developing world need to focus on improving animal as well as human health. This makes it necessary for medical and veterinary experts to collaborate and for livestock farmers and herders to be made aware of the disease risks their animals pose to the health of their households.

A project begun in 2009 and funded by the Wellcome Trust, with other support from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is studying neglected zoonotic diseases and their epidemiology to raise levels of health in poor rural communities. The project, People, Animals and Their Zoonoses, is based in Kenya’s Busia District, which sits on the country’s western border, with Uganda.

Eric Fèvre, who is working jointly for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh, is the project’s principal investigator and leader. Fèvre says this study is important.

‘Zoonotic diseases are a great burden on poor communities’, Fèvre says. ‘In a poor household where animals and people are in regular close contact, there is a significant chance of zoonotic diseases spreading. Typically in such areas, animals have access to human waste, there is little preventative health services for livestock and there is poor-quality food and forage for people and animals.’

With insufficient and/or unreliable health infrastructure and with many poor people not readily seeking professional medical attention, these diseases often go underreported or misdiagnosed. Complicating and aggravating this already serious health situation, he says, is that ‘in some cases, other non-zoonotic infections may already be present.’

Furthermore, as reported in the May 2010 issue of Veterinary Record, Fèvre says:

‘While malaria is undoubtedly a very serious health issue, its overdiagnosis hides many other problems. To compound this, people in marginalised communities can easily fall off the policy radar – many may be born, live and die without official record being made of them and, as such, they have a weak, or nonexistent, political voice. Thus, while the diseases are grouped as “neglected zoonotic diseases,” it would be equally correct to identify them as “diseases of neglected populations”.’

The Kenya zoonotic study is a four-year project that brings together ILRI scientists in Kenya with researchers from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and from the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the latter of whom are already working in much of Kenya’s Western and Nyanza provinces. These epidemiologists, veterinarians, medical health professionals and laboratory technologists will visit over 500 homesteads in Busia to collect data and samples from people and livestock; those people found ill will be treated or referred to specialists.

The project data will be used to quantify the place of zoonoses in the context of other infectious diseases and to refine our understanding of factors that put people and livestock at risk. The study team also aims to come up with diagnostic tests that can be used in the field and to design cheap, easy-to-implement health interventions for both people and livestock. The project is focusing on bovine tuberculosis, cysticercosis, brucellosis, Q-fever, Rift Valley fever and trypanosomiasis (in cattle) /sleeping sickness (in people) and their impacts on both livestock and the people.

The results of this project are expected not only to improve the health aspects of the relationship between people and their livestock in western Kenya but also to provide important background for future research and policymaking on zoonotic issues.

More information can be found at www.zoonotic-diseases.org

The May 2010 issue of the Veterinary Record gives an excellent account of this ambitious human-animal health project: http://veterinaryrecord.bvapublications.com/misc/about.dtl (subscription required).

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