In Northern Tanzania, district livestock departments provide veterinarian services to prevent the spread of animal diseases and provide responsive treatments. However, the lack of digital reporting tools to monitor animal health across the vast communal rangelands makes controlling livestock disease outbreaks a challenging task. With AfriScout, veterinarians and paravets can now monitor and geolocate alerts on animal diseases posted by pastoralists in real-time, enabling them to provide more responsive and quality care.
Dr. Mshana is one of only two veterinarians in Simanjiro district, a pastoral district covering 20,591 square kilometers encompassing the famous Masai steppe. He works in parallel with 25 field livestock officers and about 60 paravets. Conventionally, Dr. Mshana gets information on disease occurrence and outbreak through field livestock officers and community animal health workers. It usually takes long time (up to one week) to get the information and devise appropriate interventions. This increases the likelihood of livestock mortalities and poses high risk of human infection in case of zoonotic diseases.
Dr Mshana attending one of his goats ©Afriscout
With introduction of AfriScout app in Simanjiro, Dr. Mshana now gets the preliminary diseases incidence information via the AfriScout app alerts which are posted by herders themselves. Now if there is an outbreak, he can notice and take actions within a day. Dr Mshana has reported to using AfriScout to plan vaccination campaigns in areas with disease outbreaks, provide de-worming services in areas with high worm infestations, and set tsetse fly traps in areas with high tsetse infestations. He also utilizes AfriScout vegetation maps in conjunction with village land use plans to assist with field trainings on planned rotational grazing and herd migrations for improved rangeland management.
Dr. Mshana training pastoralist on proper rangeland use ©Afriscout
Since AfriScout enables pastoralists to report on other hazards such as predators and grazing restrictions, Dr Mshana has been able to better plan the field activities with the veterinary department. For example, in March this year, there was an alert on outbreak of Bovine Pleuro Pneumonia - CBPP in Lerumo village. In the same location, another user posted predator alert of an elephant roaming around. Based on these alerts, Dr. Mshana and colleagues determined to take different route to the village to perform vaccination animals on other side of Lerumo village.
Dr. Mshana guiding Afriscout agents on how and where installing tsétsé fly trap making reference to alerts showing incidence of Trypanosomiasis ©Afriscout