Caroline Kambudzi from Chiota district in Mashonaland West province is one of the government extension officers who participated in a training of trainers course on bio-security in poultry production under the Inclusive Poultry Value Chain (IPVC) project. After training, she has proceeded to impart the knowledge to poultry producers in her district. 

“Since training farmers on biosecurity, there have been major improvements in poultry hygiene, and farmers are now installing biosecurity structures on their farms, resulting in lower mortality rates”, said Kambudzi. 

Kambudzi’s work is an example of initiatives being undertaken under the European Union funded Zimbabwe Agricultural Programme (ZAGP) on animal disease control, a key area to ensure public and animal health, leading to higher productivity.

Animal diseases constitute a major constraint to livestock production and safe utilisation of animal products worldwide and Zimbabwe is no exception. The large number of disease outbreaks afflicting the country and the control measures instituted to manage these outbreaks have had significant negative economic impact.

In this month’s issue, we focus on animal health and disease control, sharing the various project approaches in this area. 

These initiatives include capacity building on good animal husbandry practices, leveraging on private sector financing to improve animal health service delivery institutional capacity building to enhance animal disease prevention, early detection, diagnosis and control. 

Focus is also on improving access veterinary drugs and chemicals for disease control and prevalence resulting in better health, genetics and increased production and productivity. 

These activities mirror ZAGP’s thrust of creating a more productive and profitable livestock sector, which is hindered by low productivity, high disease morbidity and mortality. 

In all these initiatives, ZAGP is working closely with the Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) - responsible for surveillance, prevention and control of animal and zoonotic diseases, including animal-source food safety issues.

As always, we value your feedback on this and all other issues of the newsletter. Happy reading!