6.5.1 Decline in performance of animal health services
6.5.2 Budget trends
6.5.3. Manpower ratios
Healthy animals are a prerequisite if the livestock subsector is to perform productively. Yet, animal health services in sub-Saharan Africa have deteriorated alarmingly during the past decade, with the control of economically important diseases increasingly jeopardised. Some indicators of the magnitude of the problem in sub-Saharan Africa are:
· Direct and indirect losses from animal disease and health-related causes amount to billions of US dollars per year.· Many of these losses are directly caused by mortality in cattle, sheep and goats and in other species, mainly pigs and poultry.
· Rinderpest, foot-and-mouth disease and tick-borne diseases are major causes of animal loss and/or lowered animal productivity. Corresponding losses in terms of trade and foreign exchange earnings also result.
· Internal parasites are a major cause of death in pre-weaned calves and lambs.
The declining performance of animal health services highlights the need for careful budget and manpower planning. There is a clear link between inadequate planning and operational inefficiency. After briefly examining the evidence for this link, some possible solutions to the problem will be discussed.
Post-independence relative levels and trends in budget and manpower allocations, and ratios in the animal health services of West/Central and East/Southern Africa have been studied and analysed by Addis Anteneh (1983; 1985a; 1985b; 1991) and de Haan and Solomon Bekure (1991). These studies compared the relative shares of recurrent expenditures on livestock services with recurrent expenditures on all agricultural services. By 1979, the share of livestock services in total agricultural services was, in most cases, proportionately lower than the share of livestock output (livestock GDP) in total agricultural output (agricultural GDP). This indicated that in most of the countries studied, livestock services did not receive an allocation proportionate to the contribution of the livestock subsector to GDP (Table 8).
In both regions studied, real recurrent expenditure allocated to livestock services increased over time. The most important factor contributing to the poor performance of livestock services was the disproportionately high amount of resources spent on staff, relative to non-staff costs.
Within the West and Central Africa region, growth in total recurrent budgets and staff expenditure allocated to livestock services continued into the mid 1980s for most countries studied. Overall, staff costs tended to rise faster than the total recurrent cost budgets, further "squeezing" non-staff costs in the process.
Table 6.8. Share of livestock in agricultural GDP and livestock service in agricultural budgets, 1978/1979.
|
Region/Country |
Share of livestock GDP in agricultural |
Budgetary share of livestock services in agricultural services (%) | |
|
West & Central Africa |
|
| |
|
|
Burkina Faso |
29 |
16 |
|
|
Cameroon |
10 |
14 |
|
|
Gambia |
21 |
4 |
|
|
Niger |
29 |
8 |
|
|
Sierra Leone |
7 |
5 |
|
East & Southern Africa |
|
| |
|
|
Botswana |
(75-80)1 |
44 |
|
|
Ethiopia |
33 |
11 |
|
|
Kenya |
40 |
34 |
|
|
Lesotho |
58 |
28 |
|
|
Malawi |
6 |
21 |
|
|
Swaziland |
16 |
48 |
Source: Addis Anteneh (1991).
1 Estimates from various sources.
In East and southern Africa, recurrent expenditure per TLU1 not only declined in real terms, but the share of staff expenditure in total recurrent expenditure also rose. This probably reduced the effectiveness of livestock services even more than in West and Central Africa2.
1 TLU = one tropical livestock unit of 250 kg live weight. The TLU is the equivalent of 1 camel, 1.25 horses, 1.43 bovine, 2 donkeys, 5 pigs, 10 sheep or goats or 100 poultry.2 The ratio between staff and non-staff costs is likely to be affected by the environment. A large country in the arid/semi-arid zones with relatively low disease incidence will have a different ratio to another country in an environment with higher disease incidence (Anteneh, 1985a).
IEMVT expresses the ratio between staff and non-staff recurrent costs as the coefficient of efficacy (CE), such that:
CE = non-staff expenditure/staff expenditure
Table 6.9 summarises trends in the coefficient of efficacy over the period 1969-79 for 14 West African countries. In all but two cases, the coefficient declined over the period. Similar patterns were observed in East Africa and in Zambia. This decline represents both a failure on the part of governments to provide the necessary operational funds to support staff activities and a failure on the part of animal health services to limit staff numbers and salaries.
As a result, staff have been underemployed and unable to provide an effective service-even when the will to do so existed. The production and distribution of vaccines to control serious diseases has been seriously affected, as has support for public health control measures. Solutions to this problem must be found if further deterioration in the provision of basic animal health services is to be prevented.
Table 6.9. Changes in the efficiency coefficient in African animal health service budgets (1969-79).
Source: Bremaud et al (1976a; 1976b; 1976c; 1976d; 1976e; 1976f; 1977) and IEMVT (1980)
... = data not available.
|
Box 6.2: Performance indicators for animal health services. Besides the ratio of staff:non-staff costs, two further ratios affect the delivery of national animal health services and are therefore important indicators of their efficiency. These ratios are: · the ratio of senior (highly qualified) junior (auxiliary) staff. The optimum levels for both these ratios depend on the range of services being offered, the location of staff, the species of livestock receiving attention, the size of individual herds and their dispersion, and the ease with which subordinate staff can be supervised. The following broad guidelines have been suggested (Sandford, 1983; de Haan and Nissen, 1985). When the functions of the veterinarian are primarily confined to visual diagnosis in the field, supervision of mass vaccination and enforcement of quarantine, ratios of 1 veterinarian to 20-30 auxiliary staff and up to 200,000 TLUs are feasible, the implied auxiliary staff: TLU ratio in these circumstance being 1:6667-10,000. When the veterinarian's functions extend to more sophisticated diagnosis and preventative care on a herd/flock basis, rather than on a mass vaccination basis, ratios of 1 veterinarian to 10 auxiliaries and 1:10-30 000 TLUs are feasible, the implied auxiliary staff: TLU ratio in these circumstance being 1:1000-3000. When the functions entail a full range of animal health services (including artificial insemination and individual animal care), ratios of 1 veterinarian to 1-5 auxiliaries and 1:5000 TLUs are feasible, the implied auxiliary staff:TLU ratio in these circumstances being 1: 1000-5000. Because staff numbers have been allowed to increase, most sub-Saharan African countries appear, in the light of these ratios, to be endowed with enough senior and junior staff to provide basic preventative animal health care (Sandford, 1983; Cheneau, 1986; de Haan and Nissen, 1985). However, the appearance is deceptive, since in most countries there has been a corresponding shortfall in funds available to meet the costs of veterinary inputs and other supplies. |
