Animal Health Matters - Executive Synopsis

Improving the Health of Wild and Domestic Animals to Enhance Long-Term Development Success in USAID-Assisted Countries

Executive Synopsis

1. Domestic animals, wild animals, and humans share many diseases.  Landscape fragmentation, unsustainable land-use choices, pollution, and other types of ecosystem disruption affect all three groups, often in similar ways.

2. Animal diseases that don’t directly affect people can still have extraordinary impacts on human societies and economies.

3. Animal health security is critical to protecting the US economy domestically and necessary for maintaining international trade, with billions of dollars at risk annually in the agricultural and wildlife-related sectors (e.g.- tourism, bird-watching, fishing, hunting, hospitality, ranching, etc.).

4. Developing countries are as, if not more, dependent upon healthy domestic and wild animals at local as well as national levels in terms of food security and self-sufficiency, fiber needs, micronutrients, cultural norms, sustainable livelihoods, economic growth, and trade.

5. With advanced planning and the involvement of multidisciplinary teams that include animal health experts, foreign assistance projects can avoid many of the mistakes and problems often experienced by developed countries at the livestock / wildlife interface, while also decreasing the likelihood that projects will inadvertently have negative impacts on human health and/or economic growth.

6. Many developing countries lack functional strategies and the infrastructure needed to protect their domestic agricultural and wildlife interests from endemic (native to an area) or introduced (akin to alien invasive species) diseases. Without sound vigilance systems in-place at local and national levels, the risk of diseases being accidentally exported globally through trade is also increased.

7. It is in the United States’ strategic interest to help developing countries improve their animal health-related programs, policies, and infrastructure given ongoing globalization trends and the constant threat of new and emerging as well as resurgent diseases to animal and human health worldwide.

8. Projects that incorporate animal health objectives lend themselves to quantitative short- and long-term monitoring, since disease status within and across species can be objectively measured over time. Indicators derived from an epidemiological approach can point to project success or failure.

9. By following the basic tenets of the Pilanesburg Resolution (p. 41), development agencies can improve the success and sustainability of their development interventions, particularly those that involve the agricultural and natural resource management sectors.

10. By using a simple pre-implementation project checklist (p. 44), development agencies can help set projects off in a direction that avoids negative impacts on animal health and ultimately the human condition over time.

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