The Oyo State Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support (OYO L-PRES ) Project, under the aegis of Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency (OYSADA), has trained 35 professionals in animal health to fashion out plans for vaccination and disease surveillance in the state.
Speaking at the two-day meeting, Country Representative for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya, Dr. Tunde Amole, said the meeting was to identify how, “we will build a surveillance plan; surveillance in such a way that we will be able to start monitoring and start looking for the avenue where diseases can come.
“It is like building security, health security for our animals. If some of these diseases enter the flock of a farmer, that’s trouble for that farmer. That’s why you don’t see banks giving money to some of the livestock farmers.
“They can give to cocoa farmers, maize farmers, but they are always skeptical when it comes to livestock farmers; because a disease can come overnight. However, diseases don’t just jump from heaven. They creep into our system gradually.
“We are here in the days of COVID-19. It started with one man traveling somewhere and coming back. So, the training is all about a plan to monitor disease infestation, disease occurrence, disease identification, and to report it quickly and then what should be our vaccination plan in Oyo State to prevent disease occurrence in livestock.’’
The Animal Health Officer of OYO L-PRES, Dr Ayodele Famakinde, who represented the State Project Coordinator (SPC), Alhaji Kola Kazeem, said the project was aimed at transforming livestock development in the state.
Famakinde said the project had a complete overview that involved the animal husbandry processes, the veterinary process, livestock development, pasture development, pasture maintenance, feed and forage, as well as alternative feed products for livestock, adding that it will provide the enabling environment for private farmers within the state.
He said: “OYO L-PRES organised this meeting primarily to look at how we plan disease surveillance in Oyo State. The training is about the emergency response we need to take and the preparation we need. It is about how we manage disease reporting within the livestock industry in the state. It is about how we ensure that we’re able to prevent occurrence of disease within our livestock population across all the value chains.
To the participants, Famakinde said: “They are writing history. The future of the lifestyle, animal health in Oyo State is what we are providing a direction for, and I’m glad that everyone seated here is a party to it. We are the first persons to begin the implementation at our various levels. We need to be passionate about disease reporting.
“Every one of us as professionals must be committed to reporting incidences of diseases in their different locations. We need to be passionate about vaccination. That is disease prevention. Vaccination, they say, prevention is better than cure. We need to be passionate about bio-security….”
Some of the trainees expressed delight at the convocation of the meeting. Among them are Adeleye Adeola, a veterinary doctor, and Dr. (Mrs) Olubodun Olubola, another veterinary doctor, who runs a private veterinary pharmacy and feed mill.
Olubola said: “We have been able to look at the importance of surveillance. Surveillance has to do with knowing what the disease patterns are, identifying it early, how to prevent it, and in the case there’s an outbreak, what to do to curtail the outbreak, and to learn on how to prevent future occurrence.”
Adeola added: ‘’I have gained a lot from the training. The disease is prevalent in poultry, dairy, and piggery in Oyo State. So, we dealt with it one by one in each group. It will have a lot of impact on my business. We’ve seen the vaccination programme, the treatment, prevention and how we are going to train farmers more.”
