This post is the third of a series of posts written by Rod Dubitsky, a member of BRAC USA's Advisory Council, on his recent trip visiting BRAC projects in Liberia. The trip was Rod's second experience with BRAC in Africa; in 2008, Rod visited BRAC operations both in Uganda and Bangladesh.
Tuesday May 4th, Poultry Vaccination
Today we visited the poultry vaccination program in Gbarnga. We were observing vaccines for the Newcastle disease. Newcastle disease is a highly infectious disease with nearly 100% mortality and is particularly devastating to small hold farmers in developing countries.
The poultry vaccination program is a perfect example of BRAC’s blending of market mechanisms with traditional NGO work. BRAC’s poultry vaccination program provided an incentive to Liberian volunteers to convince farmers to get their chickens vaccinated. The challenge was that BRAC required the farmers to pay for the vaccine. BRAC sells the vaccine at a markup to their cost and the poultry volunteers in turn mark up the vaccine to the farmers. The challenge was convincing the farmers to pay and from our morning visit there was no shortage of takers. They were able to convince farmers by demonstrating reduced mortality quickly after vaccination. Based on feedback from the farmers, the benefits went beyond reduced mortality. Farmers reported to BRAC staff that immunized chickens not only survived longer, they laid more eggs and laid eggs more quickly after immunization. Further, from what I could gather, BRAC was the only one doing this in Liberia.
I asked whether BRAC tracks chicken mortality and the other improvements that result from immunization. At present, BRAC tracks mortality before but only anecdotally tracks mortality after giving vaccines. Likely BRAC’s ramping up West Africa research division will tackle this. There is obviously a cost to detailed tracking of impact and if farmers are continuing to pay the immunization fees, it’s clearly working. It’s debatable whether the added cost of tracking mortality is worth it. Though quantifying the benefit will clearly depend on how many more eggs the farmers are able to sell. Nevertheless, impact assessment, while important, needs to be considered in light of the cost of gathering and studying the data.
Today we visited the poultry vaccination program in Gbarnga. We were observing vaccines for the Newcastle disease. Newcastle disease is a highly infectious disease with nearly 100% mortality and is particularly devastating to small hold farmers in developing countries.
Many farmers lined up to have the chickens vaccinated. The gathering of the squawking birds, families, chickens, hypodermic wielding extension workers, made for quite an entertaining morning.
The poultry vaccination program is a perfect example of BRAC’s blending of market mechanisms with traditional NGO work. BRAC’s poultry vaccination program provided an incentive to Liberian volunteers to convince farmers to get their chickens vaccinated. The challenge was that BRAC required the farmers to pay for the vaccine. BRAC sells the vaccine at a markup to their cost and the poultry volunteers in turn mark up the vaccine to the farmers. The challenge was convincing the farmers to pay and from our morning visit there was no shortage of takers. They were able to convince farmers by demonstrating reduced mortality quickly after vaccination. Based on feedback from the farmers, the benefits went beyond reduced mortality. Farmers reported to BRAC staff that immunized chickens not only survived longer, they laid more eggs and laid eggs more quickly after immunization. Further, from what I could gather, BRAC was the only one doing this in Liberia.
I asked whether BRAC tracks chicken mortality and the other improvements that result from immunization. At present, BRAC tracks mortality before but only anecdotally tracks mortality after giving vaccines. Likely BRAC’s ramping up West Africa research division will tackle this. There is obviously a cost to detailed tracking of impact and if farmers are continuing to pay the immunization fees, it’s clearly working. It’s debatable whether the added cost of tracking mortality is worth it. Though quantifying the benefit will clearly depend on how many more eggs the farmers are able to sell. Nevertheless, impact assessment, while important, needs to be considered in light of the cost of gathering and studying the data.
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