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MOTIVATION
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) poses a major risk to human and animal health. After the disease spread in Asia (starting in 2003) and beyond, policymakers realized they lacked the information needed to choose biologically effective and economically efficient control measures that also protect the livelihoods of rural poor. The most widely practiced method for controlling the spread of the “bird flu” virus HPAI has been the immediate culling of infected birds. However, if smallholders are not compensated for the loss of their culled birds, they may be reluctant to report outbreaks. Underreporting contributes to the spread of HPAI, which in turn can lead to more widespread income losses for small farmers. To respond to the challenge¬ of containing the spread of HPAI, program teams led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and IFPRI, with support from DFID, in collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute, worked in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana from 2007–11 to develop evidence-based responses to HPAI that consider the impact on, and effectiveness in, smallholder systems.
OUTCOMES
- IFPRI contributed to better understanding of how HPAI is spread, and identification of the critical control points for HPAI risk mitigation and cost-effective pro-poor risk reduction strategies, particularly in resource-poor countries. The program also helped shape the effective incentives policy that enabled adoption of control and prevention strategies and proposed decisionmaking and communication processes needed to incorporate research findings from this project into national HPAI control and prevention policy.
- After Ghana became the first African country hit by HPAI, IFPRI facilitated a stakeholder meeting that provided critical information for the Ministry of Agriculture. Using an innovative interview-based mapping tool, the group discovered that farmers in Ghana received compensation for reporting infected birds, but traders did not. Traders, therefore, sometimes failed to communicate suspicious bird deaths or even sold contaminated birds, which contributed to the spread of the disease.
- In the Mekong region (Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia), IFPRI produced information that led the countries to coordinate HPAI control efforts and revise culling strategies (from radical to targeted culling), substantially reducing the negative impact of disease control on livelihoods.
- In all program countries, risk assessment and risk analysis procedures were introduced or adjusted during or after the implementation of the program. Staff from relevant ministries benefited from IFPRI’s capacity-building efforts in risk analysis, and strengthened their ability to evaluate risk-management options, assess institutional capabilities, and analyze livelihood impacts of control measures for other diseases.
- Overall, the program has generated new knowledge of and approaches to a recently emerged disease with potentially serious consequences to global public health. Program countries incorporated the program’s outputs into their response systems, which contributed to the protection of animal and public health at local, national, and regional levels.
