web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine

Click here to read or make comments on this topic »

South Africa: New NGO Receives Funding to Help Curb Diseases in Livestock Owned by Rural Poor in Africa and Asia


	Email This Page Print This Page Comment on this article

Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (Edinburgh)

PRESS RELEASE
9 October 2008
Posted to the web 9 October 2008

Pretoria

The Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed), a not-for-profit organization committed to advancing innovations in livestock health as a means of reducing poverty, announced today that it has received funding to carry out its mission of "protecting livestock, saving human life."

The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are committing a total of $28 million to GALVmed over the next three years for the development and delivery of vaccines for a range of leading diseases plaguing livestock in developing countries.

According to the World Bank, 75 percent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.1 Livestock are a form of savings for many small farmers, and disease can quickly lead to financial distress. But many small farmers lack access to high-quality vaccines to protect their animals against disease. The grant will help GALVmed focus on developing and delivering vaccines to smallholder farmers who need them most.

“This funding is an important step toward closing the substantial gap between the need for livestock health mechanisms in the developing world and the amount of funding available to support those imperatives,” said Steve Sloan, Chief Executive of GALVmed. “Facilitating the development and delivery of vital medicines to populations is key to those whose survival depends on healthy livestock.”

It is widely reported that rural farmers lose 25 percent of animal herds and flocks each year to diseases such as East Coast Fever and Rift Valley Fever. Some diseases, such as Newcastle Disease, a virus affecting chickens, have mortality rates as high as 95 percent. The grant is part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development initiative, which is working with a wide range of partners to provide millions of small farmers in the developing world with tools and opportunities to boost their yields and incomes.

“Livestock are a vital asset for many smallholder farmers and their families in developing countries,” said Dr. Rajiv Shah, director of Agricultural Development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Improved technologies that help prevent disease in these animals can help farmers build assets, protect themselves against risk, and over time, lift their families out of poverty.”

GALVmed’s mission is to reduce livestock mortality rates by facilitating access to vital vaccines and medicines throughout Africa and Asia. Its partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, non-governmental organizations, and governments aim to create a path for developing and distributing affordable vaccines and treatments in rural areas.

"It is important to build partnerships between the public and private sectors to help develop agricultural technologies that will improve the lives of poor farmers and their communities in Africa," said Gareth Thomas, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development. "DFID is pleased, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to support GALVmed to do this. We look forward to GALVmed helping transform the lives of thousands of farmers through raised livestock productivity and increased incomes."

Relevant Links

GALVmed plans to develop, register and launch four to six vaccines, pharmaceutical or diagnostic products by 2015. Its partners are committed to expanding the alliance to include organizations throughout the world that are developing innovative vaccines and medicines that prevent and treat livestock diseases and ensuring that these products are produced by and delivered through the proper systems in the developing world.

Read comments. Write your own.

AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.