Perspective

Ethnoveterinary Medicine as part of an Integrated Approach to Animal Healthcare
Marina Martin and Evelyn Mathias

Lack of money, unsatisfactory results of technology transfer, and the recognition that the conventional methods of animal healthcare delivery have not reached the poor has forced governments in many countries to look for alternative approaches. Integrated animal healthcare widens the spectrum of available choices to farmers, veterinarians, and extension workers. It is one way to make services appropriate for local conditions and more cost-effective.

Production of livestock and crops is often interconnected, or integrated, particularly in the case of smallholders. Integrated animal healthcare takes into consideration the diversity of livestock raising and the environment. It combines animal treatment with disease prevention through vaccination, improved management, feeding, sanitation, and clean water. Farmers, animal healthcare providers and other stakeholders work as partners to identify and prioritise needs and find solutions to livestock production problems. They draw on the different types of veterinary medicine (e.g. allopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda) and build on farmers' knowledge.

Integrated animal healthcare allows greater flexibility than conventional approaches. The stakeholders can adapt prevention and treatment to the needs of the clients and the type and situation of each farm. The use of fine-tuned solutions is more cost-effective than general all encompassing ones.

Ethnoveterinary medicine - farmers' knowledge about animal healthcare

Farmers closely observe their animals and environment. They know when an animal is sick or when a specific useful plant in the area is getting scarce. They have names for the different animal diseases and know which age and sex of their animals are most commonly affected. Over centuries, through trial and error and deliberate experimentation, farmers have developed a wide spectrum of prevention and treatment methods. These include the use of medicinal plants, vaccination, branding, and bone-setting as well as the provision of shelters adapted to the local conditions, the exploitation of a wide range of fodder plants and many other management practices. In India, for example, ethnoveterinary medicine partly overlaps with Ayurveda, as both often use the same plants.

Farmers' knowledge provides a valuable resource for development. But not all of it is useful. Stakeholders have to select the most promising remedies and practices and test and validate them before promoting them.

Many of the plants used in animal healthcare are also used in used in human ethnomedicine and have been studied in this context. Screening the literature for available information can help avoid unnecessary costs in plant validation. Databases and new technologies such as CD-ROMs will make this easier in the future. If there is no information on a plant, it needs to be studied for its efficacy with laboratory tests and on-farm-trials. Alternatively, farmers and animal healthcare providers can field-test medicines by keeping careful records of treatments and their outcome. This validation method is likely to be cheaper and has the advantage that the remedies are tested under the conditions where they will be used. Other practices and technologies need to be validated as well as medicinal plants. Researching and validating alternative veterinary practices is only the beginning. Disseminating the results is crucial to implementation by the stakeholders.

Marina Martin: VETAID, Pentlands Science Park, Bush EH26 0PZ, Scotland, UK.
Evelyn Mathias: Independent Consultant, Weizenfeld 4, 51467 Bergisch Gladbach, Germany.
Denis Fielding: Centre of Tropical Veterinary Medicine (CTVM), University of Edinburgh, Roslin, Midlothian, EH25 9RG, UK

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