By Philips Osunsami
The Oyo State Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support (OYO L-PRES ) Project, under the aegis of Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency (OYSADA) has invited 35 professionals in the field of animal health, to fashion out plans for vaccination and disease surveillance in Oyo State.
The two-day meeting took place at the ILRI Conference Room.
OYO L-PRES, under the leadership of Dr. Debo Akande, is saddled with the responsibilities of developing agribusiness strategies and coordinating partnerships geared towards improving the rural economy.
Speaking at the meeting, the Country Representative for ILRI, Dr. Tunde Amole, stated that 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’’.
He urged the participants to see the meeting as a state assignment.
Also speaking, 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 it would provide the enabling environment for private farmers within the state.
Famakinde said, ‘ OYO L-PRES organized 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. The preparation we need. It is about how we manage disease reporting within the livestock industry in Oyo 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.
‘’So, seated in this meeting are mostly veterinarians from the private industry; from the Director of Veterinary Services in the state. The gathering includes veterinarians who are private players all across the country, all across the state. It also includes academics. We have people from Oyo State College of Agriculture, the University of Ibadan. Of course, those are institutions that directly train vets and paramedics. We have people from the Federal College of Animal Health and Production Technology in Apata. Those are people, we have people even from the research institutes in IAR&T, Moor Plantation.
‘’All of these are the big players within the livestock health industry, and we have some animal health technologists also who work for the local government. All of us are seated here to set a direction on how best to prevent the occurrence of disease in the livestock population in Oyo State.
‘ We are seated here because IITA is an international research institute which actually houses a consortium of organizations, one of them is ILRI”.
He stated that the project is focusing on four major value chains.
Famakinde also emphasized that Oyo State is the hub of poultry in West Africa.
He said: ‘’We will look at cattle, the small ruminants, that is, the sheep and goat production, the piggery industry, and the poultry industry.
‘’We are the king in the whole West African region. Oyo State is the hub of poultry in the whole West African region. On average, out of every five poultry birds that are being grown in the West African region, you can say at least one or two, if not two or three, come through Oyo State. Most of the hatcheries are here. The major hatchery market is at Oluyole. Most of the hatcheries are within Oyo State. So, Oyo State is the hub of poultry production in Nigeria and even the West African region”.
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 is, they say, prevention is better than cure. We need to be passionate about bio-security.
‘We need to go with this message, and move our other sister organizations.There is a need to help to instill that perception into the minds of our younger professionals in the university, and colleges. There is a need to instill that in the mind of all other private vets when they meet. And of course, the NVMA is here, which is the body of the Nigerian Veterinary Medical Association that houses all veterinarians. So, we believe the association will also be the voice here in Oyo State.”
Some of the trainees expressed their delight at the convocation of the meeting. Among them are Adeleye Adeola, a veterinary doctor, and Dr. Mrs Olubodun Olubola, a private veterinary doctor, who runs a private veterinary pharmacy and feed mill.
Adeola 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.
‘The first impact is that it would help in sustaining the farm and the farmer themselves. In the process where there are outbreaks and there are economic losses, the farmer is actually affected, and that brings us back to the issue of one health, where if the farmer is not well, his economic income has been reduced, his health is lost, and the farm is also lost.”
Olubola said: ‘’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 impacts on my business. We’ve seen the vaccination programme, the treatment, prevention and how we are going to train farmers more’.”