About The LIDISKI Project

Smallholders’ food security heavily relies on their livestock, critical assets for coping with shocks and in exchange for income. Support to the smallholder farmers, including livestock owners is critical to enabling affordability and access to animal protein for large proportion of the population, and to women empowerment. Livestock diseases and their related costs of management are ranked as the biggest economic threat to the livelihood of poor rural farmers and livestock owners. With increasing climate variability and change, livestock migration is increasingly common in arid and semi-arid parts of the world, increasing the risk of animal disease transmission.
In Nigeria, the issue of livestock diseases is of utmost importance to poor rural and peri-urban farmers, with over 20 million Nigerian households (est. 120 million people) relying on their livestock for nutrition. Nigerian women are key stakeholders in poultry and small ruminants value chains.
Diseases are mitigated by setting up and maintaining surveillance and control systems. However, many countries, including Nigeria, need technological inputs, improved animal health services, and better disease surveillance infrastructure, vaccines production systems, and research data.
To tackle these issues, the EU funded a new project called LIDISKI. This project aims to Integrate Knowledge collected from actors in the animal health sector to provide tools and know-how to implement sustainable Surveillance and control strategies against Livestock Diseases. Actors to be involved closely in this project include members of Communities Animal Health Workers (CAHWs), veterinary services and their commanding ministries, the National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI), field veterinarian, herders, poultry owners, and private livestock businesses.
The project focuses on two of the most impacting diseases in Nigeria:

Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR)

PPR affects small ruminants’ populations, mainly sheep and goats. The annual global damage due to PPR is estimated to be between $1.4 and $2.1 billion in Nigeria. LIDISKI will participate to the local and context dependent design of the Global Strategy for the Control and Eradication of PPR program lunched by FAO and OIE.

Newcastle Disease (ND)

ND affects domestic poultry and other bird species. It is highly virulent, with extremely high morbidity and mortality rates, especially in chickens (100% and 90%, respectively). In Nigeria, ND is seen as the major constraint to poor farmers adopting poultry-keeping as an economic activity, because of its ability to wipe out whole flocks of chickens.
The project will work in target areas of central and north Nigeria to develop and test tools to be used for animal disease surveillance across Nigeria and possibly beyond.
Methodology of the project

The whole methodology of the project is based on two central tenets:

  1. Local actors need to gain competency and benefit from new tools to maintain sustainable surveillance and control of diseases.
  2. Participatory approaches, integrating local culture and knowledge and socio-economic context are fundamental to engage communities and ensure success of surveillance and control strategies.

In Nigeria, many livestock owners prioritize animal health and are ready to pay for vaccination, and therefore there is a high demand for animal health services. This demand provides an opportunity for local revenues and private businesses associated to animal health activities, and ways to sustainable surveillance and control activities.

Based on this, the project is developed in four actions:

[divienhancer_timeLine timeline_color=”#39b549″ timeline_size=”thin” _builder_version=”4.4.4″ main_text_font_size=”16px” main_text_line_height=”1.8em” header_text_color=”#39b549″ text_orientation=”left” max_width=”100%” module_alignment=”center” hover_enabled=”0″ main_text_text_align_tablet=”” main_text_text_align_phone=”left” main_text_text_align_last_edited=”on|desktop” width_last_edited=”on|tablet” width_tablet=”100%”][divienhancer_timeLineChild identifier=”1″ title=”Capacity Building:” icon=”%%180%%” icon_color=”#39b549″ icon_background=”#054a1e” _builder_version=”4.4.4″ main_text_text_align=”left” main_text_font_size=”16px” main_text_line_height=”1.8em” header_2_text_align=”left” header_2_text_color=”#39b549″ text_orientation=”left” hover_enabled=”0″ header_2_font_last_edited=”on|phone” header_2_font_size=”22px”]Improving capacities (human and material) of Nigerian animal health actors in PPR and ND surveillance and control.

By training of dedicated actors in recognition of disease symptoms, and in collection and storage of samples and data necessary to follow and control the disease.

Increasing vaccine production and improve vaccine delivery (notably installing solar panels), with an informed business value-chain.[/divienhancer_timeLineChild][divienhancer_timeLineChild identifier=”2″ title=”Engagement:” icon=”%%180%%” icon_size=”large” icon_color=”#39b549″ icon_background=”#054a1e” _builder_version=”4.4.3″ main_text_font_size=”16px” main_text_line_height=”1.8em” header_2_text_align=”left” header_2_text_color=”#39b549″ header_2_font_size=”26px” text_orientation=”left”]

Increasing activities of field actors (field veterinarians, CAHWs, herders and poultry owners) in vaccination and diseases reporting.
By communication and awareness campaigns.
Diagnostic reports will be produced and communicated to relevant field actors.

[/divienhancer_timeLineChild][divienhancer_timeLineChild identifier=”3″ title=”Understanding:” icon=”%%180%%” icon_size=”large” icon_color=”#39b549″ icon_background=”#054a1e” _builder_version=”4.4.3″ main_text_text_align=”left” main_text_font_size=”16px” header_2_text_align=”left” header_2_text_color=”#39b549″ text_orientation=”left”]Local and/or international experts will design and implement socio-economic and epidemiological surveys focusing on PPR and ND distribution and impact, the perception of disease and vaccination cost-benefits, gender-specific issues, and the impact of climatic events on their livelihood.[/divienhancer_timeLineChild][divienhancer_timeLineChild identifier=”4″ title=”Developing: ” icon=”%%180%%” icon_size=”large” icon_color=”#39b549″ icon_background=”#054a1e” _builder_version=”4.4.3″ main_text_font_size=”16px” header_2_text_color=”#39b549″ text_orientation=”left”]All methods and tools developed during this project will be placed in a centralized, easy-to-use tool kit that the NVRI will be able to use to scale-up surveillance and control efforts to other regions of Nigeria in collaboration with federal and State governments.[/divienhancer_timeLineChild][/divienhancer_timeLine]

Get Involved

Let’s improve the livelihoods of smallholder livestock farmers together

Find Us On:

Contact Us

Disclaimer: This LIDISKI.org was created and maintained with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of LIDISKI and do not necessarily reflect the view of the European Union.

© 2020 Copyright LIdiski.org. All Rights Reserved.