In the present study, we quantified the effect of livestock services provided through paravets (intermediate-level training in veterinary medicine) on mortality and offtake of small ruminants in Western Afghanistan for the years 2010, 2011 and 2013. We compared mortality in adult and in young stock, and offtake of young stock of 120 livestock owners that made use of the paravet services (Users) with 120 livestock owners who did not make use of these services (Non-users). Security issues in the districts under study influenced the choice of villages. Within villages, livestock owners were purposively selected based on their known use of the services, including the provision of biologicals such as anthelmintics and vaccines. In addition, we subdivided both categories into 'partial' and 'full' based on the intensity of use of biologicals. Paravets were not only trained on preventive and curative veterinary medicine, they were also trained in extension and trained on adhering to a cold-chain and applying quality biologicals. For Non-users there was the possibility to buy biologicals through a local market or bazaar. In Afghanistan, local markets have an extensive supply of vaccines, anthelmintics, and medicines from a variety of sources, often not handled appropriately and therefore of varying quality. The results indicated that livestock owners making partial or full use of the paravet services had statistically significant better animal health and production results. The mortalities in adult stock, expressed as Incidence Rate Ratios (IRRs), for the partial-Users and full-Users categories were estimated to be respectively 0.80 and 0.73 times the mortality observed in the partial Non-users', the reference category. A similar result was observed for young stock mortality with estimated IRRs of 0.81 and 0.77 for partial and full-Users category respectively. The offtake for partial- and full-Users category livestock owners were 1.24 and 1.21 times higher compared with the reference category. In conclusion, we demonstrated significant improvement of health and production parameters in small ruminants' flocks of owners making use of the services of the DCA-trained paravets, emphasizing the importance of this sustainable and effective system of private veterinary service delivery in Afghanistan.
Keywords: Afghanistan; Animal health service providers; Livestock mortality; Paravets; Small ruminants.
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