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Improving rural livelihood through livestock treatment campaigns: Dhuusamareeb rural communities

Countries
Somalia
Sources
BRCiS
Publication date

Before BRCiS’s livestock treatment campaign in Kaah village, Guriel town in the Galgadud region, the local communities were stressed with unknown livestock disease. The disease had weakened and impacted negatively impacted the value of livestock when the community opted to sell some livestock to treat the diseased ones.

Most of the animals in this area were suffering from low immune systems, which further weakened them. A number of livestock herds were dying almost every day because of that ailment without having no appropriate treatments for the animals. The majority of the communities did not afford to buy the applicable drugs.

"There were no good equipped and functioning veterinary centres in our village that offer animal health services. There weren't professional and well-trained animal health workers as well. Says, Istahil, Kaah village resident. NRC Somalia, through the BRCiS project, has supported 36 Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs) from three different districts in South-central Somalia, including Adado, Dhusamareb, and Baidoa. The CAHWs were selected from the rural villages, and they were provided with basic livestock treatment skills for instance treating seasonal livestock diseases. State Ministry of Livestock has actively facilitated the capacity building process.

After the training, the community animal health workers carried out a massive animal treatment campaign in the most vulnerable rural villages of Dhuusamareeb district in Galmudug state of Somalia. The campaign had a huge impact on these communities by improving animal health, and thus positively impacted their livelihood for instance milk production has increased compared to the previous productions before the treatment.

The local people are now feeling positive on increasing livestock production allowing the struggling families to provide milk for their children and sell extra milk to use the money to cover their household related needs i.e food, clothing, and health services. Similarly, there is no livestock death in the area since the animal treatment campaign.

Istahil, thanked NRC for the support and also mentioned that there's a significant change after the animal treatment campaign. She said, "NRC's animal treatment brought back the health of our livestock and minimized livestock diseases. Getting more milk than ever before, increased price of livestock and reduction of animal death since the distribution of good quality drugs to treat our livestock for a longer period was also another remarkable support".

BRCiS (Building Resilience in Somalia) is a consortium of 9 INGOs and LNGOs led by NRC and funded by UK government, working on resilience building in Somalia. The projects are cross-cutting development, emergency and humanitarian. NRC is also among the broad implementing agencies and is currently operational in South-central Somalia, Jubaland, Galmudug, South West State and Somaliland.

Published by
Abdikarim Ali, NRC BRCiS Communication and advocacy coordinator