Keeping PACE with change
High quality veterinary services have always been a problem for the vast majority of livestock owners in sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that there are 20 million pastoralists and 240 million people who combine livestock with other farming activities. Nearly all of these people, many of whom are very poor, have to rely on the informal sector for veterinary advice and drugs. How can they get access to affordable, reliable, animal health care?
The informal private sector is, by definition, illegal and unregulated.
The problems are not hard to imagine. Illiterate, vulnerable people, who may
be heavily dependent upon their livestock for their livelihoods, fall easy
prey to unscrupulous traders. There is no quality control over the drugs that
are being sold nor over the advice, if any, with which they are dispensed.
There is therefore a very real risk that drugs are misused. 
The
consequences of this include health risks for those handling the medicines,
harmful residues in meat and milk, and the emergence of 'super-bugs' - new
strains of human and animal disease that resist treatment.
The most successful and widely used of the alternatives open to poorer livestock owners are the NGO trained community-based animal health workers or 'barefoot vets'. Where they have been properly selected and trained, and given ongoing support, they have shown that they can deliver valuable, effective, high quality services for which even the poorest farmers will pay. But, not surprisingly, there has been distrust, and even hostility, from the professionally trained veterinarians who have qualified only after five or six years' university training. In Kenya there has been a real breakthrough to far greater understanding and acceptance that there is a need for both barefoot and well-shod veterinarians.
The development has come about partly through the efforts of the DFID-supported CAPE project (Community-based Animal health and Participatory Epidemiology unit) which is implemented by OAU-IBAR (Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources). CAPE works with the NGOs that deliver community based animal health services by providing financial or technical support. It has also helped to develop public and private sector solutions to animal health service delivery. For example, a number of community animal health workers may be linked to a professional vet who provides a quality assurance and referral service. Work has also been undertaken at policy level. The CAPE project has brought interested parties together to work on the development of policy and legislative frameworks that will enable quality animal health services to reach all farmers. Policy and legislation must be supported by a system of enforcement which is clear, simple and cost effective. By brokering discussion about the policies to be enacted between both regulators and those who are to be regulated, CAPE believes that regulations have a much better chance of being accepted and adhered to.
A recent example of this in Kenya is work undertaken with the Veterinary Board. This is the official professional body that supervises the veterinary profession in that country. Following training to the Board's standardized curriculum, community animal health workers will be registered to work in strict compliance with the Board's guidelines. It is hoped that, if all goes according to plan, some of the other 32 countries in sub-Saharan Africa may be interested in this new model of co-operation within the animal health sector. The benefits this could bring to owners of livestock, especially the poor, would be incalculable.
