Disease economic analysis for Armenia to support decision making

VetEffecT is working in a project in Armenia to improve the capacity of the State Service for Food Safety (SSFS) to conduct economic analyses of diseases impact, as well as the cost of prevention, control and eradication strategies. 

The project is implemented under the Food Safety Capacity Building Project. This project is funded by the World Bank through a Grant from the World Bank’s Institutional Development Fund (IDF) and is being implemented in the Republic of Armenia (RA) for the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and the State Service for Food Safety (SSFS).

The livestock sector concerns mainly cattle and sheep and goat farming based on traditional husbandry systems. Armenia suffers from a multitide of animal diseases. Most herds are small holder farms with few animals per herd, and the sector is not well organised. Since many years annual vaccination and testing campaigns are carried out, but without accurate monitoring of progress or economical benefits. This, together with the practical difficulties of the highly mountainous country, and the practices of grazing or free roaming on pasture, makes is difficult to effectively implement disease control programmes. The project should start set up of economical data collection and using it to develop scenario's for disease control as a support tool in the policy making.