Primary aquatic animal health care in rural, small-scale, aquaculture development

Abstract

This document is the technical proceedings of the Asia Regional Scoping Workshop on Primary Aquatic Animal Health Care in Rural-scale, Aquaculture Development, held in Dhaka, Bangladesh from 27 to 30 September 1999. The workshop largely focused on understanding the impacts of aquatic animal health risks associated with rural, small-scale aquaculture and enhanced fisheries and evaluating their impacts on rural livelihoods. The workshop also attempted to derive appropriate management interventions to reduce those risks. The workshop was a unique event bringing together experienced aquatic animal health specialists, aquaculturists, sociologists, economists, extension specialists and rural development practitioners in the Asian region. Although quantitatively estimating the overall impacts of disease on rural livelihoods was difficult die to lack of adequate socio-economic information, the consensus among teh workshop participants was that aquatic animal health problems are a risk to livel ihoods of people involved in small-scale aquaculture and enhances fisheries in Asia.