Towards a healthier planet: Veterinary epidemiology research at ILRAD and ILRI, 1987–2014
The good health of livestock, and of the humans who tend them, market them, consume their products and benefit from the resources they offer to populations across the world, has been central to our international development agenda for the past decade. It emerges with even stronger emphasis in the sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Understanding health constraints to development, and how these can be reduced or mitigated, demands structured and well-coordinated research that can inform policy and evidence-based practices for disease control and prevention. This is the fundamental principle of epidemiology, whether applied to human or animal diseases.
Veterinary epidemiology was introduced into ILRAD in 1987 to provide more substantive justification for the investments being made into fundamental research on vaccine development for the two African vector-borne diseases—theileriosis (East Coast fever, ECF) and trypanosomiasis—on which ILRAD focused. Under the Epidemiology and Socio-economics Program a small multidisciplinary team set up a series of institutional collaborations to undertake impact assessments of these two diseases in different regions of Africa. The term epidemiology was not completely new to ILRAD, but it had been used in the context of parasite strain variations, not in the context of understanding disease dynamics in different livestock production systems, and the impacts on people who derived their livelihoods from them.
For the next seven years, until the merger of ILRAD and the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA ) in 1995 and the establishment of ILRI, the program focused almost exclusively on the dynamics and impacts of tick and tsetse-borne pathogens of livestock in Africa. In the new institutional environment following the merger, the geographic focus, disease focus, disciplinary makeup and range of tools used by the group broadened substantially, tackling multiple diseases in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and building capacity in epidemiological and economic impact assessment techniques. For a period of 15 years (1987–2002) ILRAD/ILRI’s epidemiology and socio-economic impact assessment capacity was assembled in one
team based at what became known as the ‘Epicentre’, serving a range of institutional and externally commissioned needs; it became increasingly recognized internationally for its focus on animal health issues affecting economic development and poverty reduction. Through a major study of animal health research priorities commissioned by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), the team made a substantial contribution to the design of ILRI’s new strategy which emerged in 2002. But ironically the new institutional structure which emerged to serve the new strategy did not include an epidemiology and disease control program, and epidemiological capacity at ILRI over the last decade has become scattered throughout the institute and regions, the emphasis on quantitative epidemiology has decreased, and the focus has moved to new areas such as food safety, zoonoses and emerging diseases. Food safety and zoonoses is now the only one of ILRI’s 10 programs that has epidemiology focus and leadership.
Veterinary epidemiological and economic impact sciences at ILRAD and ILRI have left a valuable legacy of publications in peer-reviewed journals, strategic reports and policy documents, as well as methodologies and approaches which have been applied in virtually all corners of the world. The products of these sciences have also contributed to disease control policies and strategies in different ways, and a vast cadre of epidemiologists trained at ILRAD and ILRI is now serving different institutional needs in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America.
Download the full report from ILRI’s website.
