BackgroundEthiopia has the second largest human population in Africa and the largest livestock population on the continent. About 80% of Ethiopians are dependent on agriculture and have direct contact with livestock or other domestic animals. As a result, the country is vulnerable to the spread of zoonotic diseases. As the first step of the country's engagement in the Global Health Security Agenda, a zoonotic disease prioritization workshop was held to identify significant zoonotic diseases of mutual concern for animal and human health agencies.MethodsA semi-quantitative tool developed by the US CDC was used for prioritization of zoonotic diseases. Workshop participants representing human, animal, and environmental health ministries were selected as core decision-making participants. Over 300 articles describing the zoonotic diseases considered at the workshop were reviewed for disease specific information on prevalence, morbidity, mortality, and DALYs for Ethiopia or the East Africa region.Committee members individually ranked the importance of each criterion to generate a final group weight for each criterion.ResultsForty-three zoonotic diseases were evaluated. Criteria selected in order of importance were: 1)severity of disease in humans, 2)proportion of human disease attributed to animal exposure, 3)burden of animal disease, 4)availability of interventions, and 5)existing inter-sectoral collaboration. Based on the results from the decision tree analysis and subsequent discussion, participants identified the following five priority zoonotic diseases: rabies, anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, and echinococcosis.DiscussionMulti-sectoral collaborations strengthen disease surveillance system development in humans and animals, enhance laboratory capacity, and support implementation of prevention and control strategies. To facilitate this, the creation of a One Health-focused Zoonotic Disease Unit is recommended. Enhancement of public health and veterinary laboratories, joint outbreak and surveillance activities, and intersectoral linkages created to tackle the prioritized zoonotic diseases will undoubtedly prepare the country to effectively address newly emerging zoonotic diseases.
Spate irrigation, a floodwater harvesting and management system, has for the past 70 centuries provided a livelihood for about 13 million resource-poor people in some 20 countries. Despite being the oldest, the system still remains the least studied and the least understood. It is only in the past two decades that the system has been subject to some modernization interventions, much of which focused on improving floodwater diversion efficiency. Effective floodwater diversion measures are necessary, but they must be supplemented with equally effective field water management and soil moisture conservation measures if sustainable improvement of land and water productivity is to be achieved. This paper draws on studies conducted in the past 5 years, particularly in the Republic of Yemen, Pakistan and Eritrea. The studies employed both qualitative and quantitative methods and assessed the modernization package that could result in lasting enhancement of crop productivity in spate irrigated agriculture. The suggested modernization measures include: avoid overstretching the command area; limit the number of irrigation turns to two or an irrigation gift of 1000 mm; avoid field bund heights of more than 1 m; adopt a field-to-field water distribution system instead of an individual field water distribution system; opt for water rights and rules that entitle downstream fields to the more frequent small and medium floods thereby ensuring equity in both water quality and quantity; optimize soil water-holding capacity and infiltration rate through pre-and-post irrigation tillage, combined tillage as well as soil mulching.
This article discusses spate irrigation in Ethiopia and aims to take stock of the current status of spate irrigation development. It summarizes experiences so far and formulates a number of recommendations on the development of this upcoming resource management system. It argues that raised weirs are useful mainly in areas where a large head for spate flow diversion is required, but that traditional earthen structures with conical stone/gabion reinforcements are cost-effective and technically adequate for floodwater distribution and management. It contends that the practical successes of sediment settling ponds (gravel traps) are at best mixed. Even where a small basin is justified, it can only ever trap a small proportion of the incoming sediment load. It is better to allow large floods with excessive sediment load (>100,000 ppm) to by-pass upstream intakes to be diverted lower down the system, and provide additional livelihood opportunities in downstream areas in the form of rangeland and agro-forestry development. This is particularly useful in the lowlands of Ethiopia with large pastoral community where spate irrigation is yet to make in-roads. The article further explains that water rights in spate are different from the sharing and allocation of perennial flows-they are dynamic and respond to a situation that differs from year to year as well as within a year and that a certain degree of inequity among users is inevitable. Keeping the command area compact can ensure two or more irrigation turns and this can highly increase productivity as
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