Poverty reduction through animal health

This article looks into how animal health influences poverty reduction. It explains that animal diseases can be divided into three categories: those that influence the vulnerability and assets of smallholder livestock keepers, (ii) constrain increases in productivity and (iii) constrain market access. Reducing vulnerability and improving market access are themes that appear in frameworks developed by the DFID to evaluate strategies for poverty reduction. Diseases affecting vulnerability are those causing high levels of mortality in key livestock species important to the poor (such as the seasonal epidemics of hemorrhagic septicemia of cattle and buffalo in South Asia and the epidemic waves of Newcastle disease of poultry in Africa and Asia) and those causing illness in their owners and keepers (such as brucellosis of cattle, small ruminants, and pigs in many regions). Diseases constraining productivity include those that are more pathogenic in non-indigenous breeds of livestock that are increasingly used to improve performance [such as the tick-borne disease East Coast fever (ECF) of cattle in eastern and southern Africa]. Diseases constraining market access include those in which human disease can be caused by consumption of meat or milk products (such as cysticercosis of pigs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America) and those spread by movement of animals or livestock products, such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) of ruminants and pigs. The paper examines what science can offer to this situation. New, more cost-effective approaches to delivery of animal health services are critical to poverty reduction processes, with greater incorporation of demand-led features that consider accessibility, acceptability, and sustainability as well. An essential component will be the growing set of participatory approaches used for disease surveillance, priority setting, and interventions, as well as the growing understanding of how innovation systems can help tools reach the poorer sectors of society. Quantitative epidemiological sciences, in combination with economics tools, can aid in prioritization and in identifying the most cost-effective intervention strategies. In addition, there are the more high-tech tools of complex systems science modeling that show considerable promise, although these are data-hungry animals in a data-barren environment. Vaccines are critical technologies for the prevention of infectious diseases, and here science has a major role to play. Vaccin