Animal Health Service Delivery Systems in Kenya s Marginal Areas under Market Liberalization: A Case for Community-Based Animal Health Workers

BACKGROUND Livestock health service delivery in many developing countries is undergoing privatization as part of an international restructuring for economic development. One widely publicized initiative to refocus livestock health service delivery has been the introduction of community-based animal health workers (CBAHWs). This initiative involves training community-selected representatives in basic animal health care and livestock production techniques. The primary objective is to supplement and support the existing but overstretched professional system for delivering such services to communities in marginal areas of many developing countries. Community-based livestock services in developing countries have received increasing attention during the past decade. This attention has come not only from the communities concerned, but also from several important international development agencies. Several studies of the concept of community participation and its role in animal health services delivery have concluded that community-based approaches offer viable alternatives to the resource-constrained and poorly functioning public veterinary services in developing countries. In implementing these community-based programs, different countries have adopted different approaches, presumably to tailor the programs to the specific needs of livestock farmers in varied environments. Although numerous terms have been used to describe these differing programs, most of them share similar features and goals. The communities within which they work typically select individuals for training. Technical training in animal health is short, usually less than a month. Low-cost strategies concentrate mainly on important livestock health and management issues of the farming community. Payment for services provided normally comes directly from clients. Experiences from these programs indicate that, by using existing traditional knowledge, CBAHW programs encourage the participation of the local communities in the design and delivery of animal health care services. The CBAHW model also empowers the local people to determine the type of animal health services they receive. In some areas conditions may exist that would permit full privatization using this approach. This community-based approach has shown that pastoralists and agropastoralists, for example, can organize themselves to select CBAHWs for training and offer animal health services. In many areas where these programs have been developed, however, no accompanying studies have been undertaken to assess their impact and to establish factors that may influence their success and sustainability. These community-based projects have tended not to collect quantitative data because of resource and logistical constraints, and the need to demonstrate positive impact on animal health to local communities is becoming more apparent. CBAHW programs have become crucial yet controversial components of the privatization design. This study addresses this gap in the literature by assessing the impact of this community-based approach on animal health service delivery, with the objective of evaluating it as a model of animal health delivery in arid lands of the developing world. This study was designed to help understand the nature, characteristics, and activities of CBAHW programs in marginal areas and their influence on livestock productivity. The aim was to generate information that would guide policy debate about integrating CBAHWs into formal health delivery systems where appropriate. The set of CBAHWs operating in Makueni district, Kenya, was used as a case study.