The goal of GBADs’ work in the AHSS programme is to provide tools for the veterinary services, para-veterinarians, researchers and educators to support their ministers to make improved investment cases during the public budgeting process.

To support this, Anne Meyer and Ben Huntington led a 3-day training workshop in Zambia for the government veterinary services, researchers and private sector representatives to introduce key concepts in animal health economics. Participants were guided through practical examples of partial budget analysis to assess short-term impacts of example animal health interventions. Then, a cost-benefit analysis was developed and used to evaluate longer-term changes generated by animal health interventions such as a change in FMD policy. The nature and quality of data required to parametrize such analyses were also considered with the participants. Finally, the workshop provided the opportunity to explore the narrative elements relative to the people and processes that can be influenced by conducting an ex-ante economic analysis of a proposed intervention.

Special thanks to two of our Ghanaian colleagues who travelled to take part in the meeting, and the online contributions of Nick Lyons, Chris Bartels, Wudu Temesgen and Jonathan Rushton who provided interesting and inspiring examples of economic evaluations for disease policy change in different contexts.

This event concludes the current phase of work conducted by Global Burden of Animal Diseases with the Animal Health Systems Strengthening programme funded by UK’s Overseas Development Assistance via the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

If you would like to hear more about our current work on Animal Health System Strengthening (AHSS) then feel free to contact us!