Animal Health

Animal diseases have been always considered as important factors that contribute to the poor or limited productivity of herds particularly in the traditional farming systems of SADC member states, hence limiting the creation of farm surplus, and the improvement of welfare for the traditional farmers. Contagious diseases are also considered as source of risk hence externalities as they may affect a whole region despite the efforts of some farmers to sustain prevention. Therefore in this particular topic the role of the public sector is still to be emphasized, in liaison with the private sector and international organisations (WTO, OIE, FAO).

Animal health is now becoming a major threat to the development of international trade for animal products and live animals, and yet represents the ultimate barriers for trade within the region and outside the region (i.e. a Non trade barrier, NTB, given the SPS terminology).

For both reasons PRINT has engaged in providing accurate regional quality information on the status of important diseases of trade, in liaison with international organisations in the region (OIE SRO), SADC technical subcommittees (on Veterinary Laboratory diagnostic and on epidemiology and Informatics), and based on monthly reporting of member states.

LIMS will have a strong component on animal health information in order to provide retrospective analysis of health facts in the region, and provide guidance for new policy. Other components of PRINT are also addressing animal health like the studies, or the training. As an illustration studies will be launched on export zoning within SADC by envisaging OIE compliant scenario for creating export regions for animal products, in line with the OIE Health code definition of compartimentalisation and zoning. Besides this activity, the regional and national training programme of PRINT has already embarked in providing updated knowledge on animal health to the Livestock sector professionals to enable to tackle the new challenges of their profession.