This Pan African Strategy for the Control and Eradication of Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) is a multilateral sub-sectoral document that revises and updates the Pan-African Strategy for the Progressive Control of PPR of 2010 to align it to the Global strategy for the Control and Eradication of PPR, jointly prepared by FAO and OIE, launched in 2015. The overall objective of the Strategy is to contribute to food security, poverty alleviation, the resilience of livestock-dependent communities in Africa, and economic growth of the affected countries by achieving a PPR-free Africa status and, in general, improving the health and production of small ruminants. The Strategy has three main objectives, namely (i) eradicate PPR from Africa by 2030; (ii) control other small ruminant diseases (SRDs); and (iii) strengthen veterinary services. The document adopts a phased approach based on four different stages which correspond to a combination of decreasing levels of epidemiological risk and increasing levels of prevention and control. These are: Stage 1, epidemiologic and socio-economic impact assessment; Stage 2 control through vaccination; Stage 3 eradication; Stage 4, verification of absence and apply for the OIE official country status of PPR freedom. Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) will be promoted in order to implement disease specific prevention and control strategies: the leadership of the animal health system should remain in the hands of the national public services with, when appropriate, delegation of public tasks to the private sector. The entire document focuses on the improvement of production to be achieved by improving the small ruminants' health. To achieve this objective the tools deemed crucial are (i) strengthen the veterinary services in a sustainable manner at ethical, organizational, legislative, regulatory and technical level; (ii) strengthen laboratory diagnostic capacity, epidemiological surveillance, prevention and control; (iii) develop a huge vaccination campaign with the objective of achieving at least 80% immunity in targeted flocks, geographical areas or farming systems (critical control points) in order to break the epidemiological virus maintenance and spread (immuno-sterilization); (iv) put in place an appropriate disease surveillance system to detect virus incursion or virus circulation, particularly in unvaccinated parts of the national flock; (v) establish a PPR vaccine bank at the continental level for rapid access for urgent use by any African country; (vi) develop and identification system for animals and records of animal movements in the higher stages to enable livestock movements to be traced during epidemiological investigations of outbreaks. Based on the high importance of sheep and goats, “the cattle of the poor”, in the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the developing world, the control, and eradication of PPR should be considered as one of the means in the fight against poverty and food insecurity. The implementation of the Strategy is important to promote inclusive economic and social growth since it will highly contribute to the poverty alleviation and resilience of livestock-dependent communities. The main interventions proposed are (i) strengthening the participation of representatives of producers’ and farmers’ communities to reach small ruminants in some difficult areas (e.g. remote or insecure areas), in locations where the density of animals is very low such as in smallholder village production systems in crop-based humid zones or to facilitate revaccination of young stock when required; (ii) promoting effective communication with stakeholders for awareness creation; (iii) creating adequate incentives and partnerships (joint programs, communication, and operational funding) for community veterinary services delivery by enhancing public-private partnerships while promoting effective participation of the community (livestock-owners) and the private sector. As for Governance, the OIE Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS) Pathway will be a major tool for structuring and planning the activities and for assessing progress in the strengthening of veterinary services. Thus, countries progressing along the stages will have to simultaneously develop their veterinary services to be able to fulfill the criteria for attaining freedom from PPR. Achieving progress in PPR eradication and controlling other SRDs will not be possible without having created an appropriate enabling environment for disease control. It is also essential to develop an Action Plan to launch, foster, sustain, coordinate and streamline interventions and actions by the different stakeholders.
2015-12-01