The impacts of livestock diseases and their control on growth and development processes that are pro-poor

Abstract

Poverty is now at the heart of development discourse; we discuss how it is measured and understood. We next consider the negative and positive impacts of livestock on pro-poor development. Taking a value-chain approach that includes keepers, users and eaters of livestock, we identify diseases that are road blocks on the 'three livestock pathways out of poverty'. We discuss livestock impacts on poverty reduction and review attempts to prioritize the livestock diseases relevant to the poor. We make suggestions for metrics that better measure disease impact and show the benefits of more rigorous evaluation before reviewing recent attempts to measure the importance of disease to the poor. High impact of a disease does not guarantee high benefits from its control; other factors must be taken into consideration, including technical feasibility and political desirability. We conclude by considering how we might better understand and exploit the roles of livestock and improved animal health by posing three speculative questions on the impact of livestock diseases and their control on global poverty: how can understanding livestock and poverty links help disease control?; if global poverty reduction was the aim of livestock disease control, how would it differ from the current model?; and how much of the impact of livestock disease on poverty is due to disease control policy rather than disease itself?

Review on Epidemiology of Camel and Human Brucellosis in East Africa, Igad Member Countries

“…The burden of brucellosis is greatest in low-income countries. It is a 'multiple burdens' disease with economic impacts attributable to human, livestock and wildlife disease [12,13,14]. It is the second most important zoonotic disease in the world, accounting for the annual occurrence of more than 500,000 human cases [15].…”

Where is the Participation in Participatory Epidemiology? How Engagement with Social Science could lead to Improved Understanding and Control of Peste des Petits Ruminants

“…Lack of sufficient resources in the veterinary service system in many of the affected countries is most likely also contributing to the current failure to manage PPR (Perry et al, 2013;Perry and Grace, 2009;Forman et al, 2012;de Balogh et al, 2013).…”

The Burden of Livestock Parasites on the Poor

“…Livestock serve as another living form of capital in the system, and so the burden of livestock parasites is an extension of that of human parasitic disease. Given the multiple indirect pathways by which livestock contribute to economic production, nonzoonotic livestock parasites (which represent most livestock parasites) may be even more important to human health than zoonotic parasites, such as echinococcosis, foodborne trematodiases, cysticercosis, and zoonotic schistosomiasis [9], that contribute directly to human disease [10].…”

“…development [10,13], can lessons from global health be expanded to improve the delivery of animal health services to the poor? Just as for human disease, there are well-known tools for livestock disease prevention and control, including vaccines and chemotherapeutic agents, but they are generally underutilized by the poor, because they are often not available, are cost prohibitive, or undervalued [10].…”

“…Just as for human disease, there are well-known tools for livestock disease prevention and control, including vaccines and chemotherapeutic agents, but they are generally underutilized by the poor, because they are often not available, are cost prohibitive, or undervalued [10]. Although the burden of livestock disease is determined by population-level processes, the cost of control remains largely in the private realm, where the financial burden falls heavily on the individual livestock producers [10].…”