ILRI’s ‘A disease called poverty’ poster: An old-fashioned deadly disease is emerging from an ancient culture and an emerging economy (poster credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan). ‘Ethiopia has the largest cattle population in Africa. The vast majority of the national herd is of indigenous zebu cattle maintained in rural areas under extensive husbandry systems. However, in response … Continue reading
Category Archives: Human Health
Human Health
Pathogen ecologies and human interventions: The natural and unnatural histories of zoonotic diseases
Three diapered goats in the boot of a car in Bamako, Mali (photo on Flickr by Romel Jacinto/37 °C). This week, the Lancet publishes a series of three papers on diseases that are ‘zoonotic’, that is, infections shared by people and other animals. As William Keresh of EcoHealth Alliance (New York) and his colleagues explain in … Continue reading
‘Crypto’ and other diseases we get from animals are on the rise in poor countries
Leonard Gitau, a small-scale livestock farmer in Dagoretti, Nairobi, speaks to journalists during a media tour of urban farmers in Nairobi on 21 Sep 2012 (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu). Sarah Ooko, special correspondent for the East African, reports that ‘animal to human diseases are on the rise’ in this region. ‘Zoonoses’ is the term used … Continue reading
Slum livestock = Food? Income? Disease? All three?–Al Jazeera reports on ILRI research
Peter Greste, a journalist with Al Jazeera, recently accompanied veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert Delia Grace to the slums of Nairobi, to take a first-hand look at ‘urban farming’, livestock farming in particular. Grace works for the International Livestock Research Institute and leads a health component of a new multi-institutional CGIAR Research Program on … Continue reading
Cattle in the capital, managed well, can improve nutrition and health in Kenya’s slums
Leornard Gitau, a small-scale livestock farmer in Dagoretti, Nairobi speaks to journalists during a media tour of urban farmers in Nairobi on 21 Sep 2012 (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu). In the Nairobi suburb of Dagoretti, ‘Leonard Gichuru Gitau is a city dweller, but it doesn’t take a detective to see that he is also a … Continue reading
Urban agriculture: Where suburbs and farms, pathogens and livestock, meet and mix
A dairy farm in Dagoretti, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, where lines between city-life and farm-life are blurred (photo credit: Tristan McConnell). Tristan McConnell reported in the GlobalPost yesterday that ‘In modern Africa, it can be hard to tell where the city ends and the countryside begins. Rural Kenyans flocking to the city in ever-greater numbers … Continue reading
New FAO book spells out rationale, priorities for investing in livestock development to reduce poverty
A new FAO study reports that more than 85 per cent of poor livestock keepers in sub-Saharan Africa live in extreme poverty; here, at a Toureg encampment near Fakara, in Niger, a boy herds a prized animal, and asset, of his family (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann). A new book on the intersection of poverty reduction … Continue reading
Animal-to-human diseases spreading with environmental changes–ILRI’s Delia Grace in The Guardian
Villagers watch on as a team restrains a small pig for blood sampling in Luang Prabang, Laos (photo credit: ILRI/Kate Blaszak). Delia Grace, an Irish veterinary epidemiologist and public health expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says shifts in forest cover, agricultural practices, mining and reservoirs are thought to be affecting the transmission … Continue reading
Combating zoonoses in emergent livestock systems – Meta-database of potential approaches
Zoonoses pose an increasing problem globally due to increasing world human population, intensifying livestock production and ongoing encroachment of people into formerly sheltered natural ecosystems and greater contact with wildlife. Technical solutions alone are not enough to respond to this increasing challenge. Understanding the social, cultural, economic and governance issues around zoonoses in different regions, … Continue reading
Dry-season milk supplies to pastoral children improves their nutrition, development and health
Fresh camel milk from Somali youths (photo on Flickr by G A Hussein). The Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University (USA), has published a report of a study on the impact of dry-season livestock support on milk supply and child nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s Somali Region is the easternmost of Ethiopia’s 9 ethnically … Continue reading