VETAID and RVC response to drought in East Africa

Context : The Regional Disaster

The drought situation in North Eastern Kenya and other marginal agriculture areas is becoming increasingly serious, with the poor 2010 short rains contributing to an acute food and livelihood crisis as early as January 2011. This situation has been further exacerbated by the poor performance of the long rains through April, May, June and July 2011 and, based on the seasonal forecast for August and beyond has now deteriorated into a humanitarian emergency way before the onset of the short rains (expected in October).

The President of Kenya declared the current drought a national disaster in his speech to the nation in late May 2011. This is in the midst of an inflation rate of 14% which is the highest in two years and likely to continue increasing (OCHA, May 2011). Food prices have shot up drastically to unprecedented levels with maize prices rising sharply to 30-60 percent above the 5 year average in the pastoral and agro-pastoral areas.

Most of the people worst affected by the drought are traditionally pastoralists who traditionally rely on keeping livestock for their livelihood. However their animals have also been badly hit by the disaster with starvation, disease and death commonplace. Many of their best breeding animals are dying and so regenerating the herds after the worst of the drought and restoring pastoral livelihoods will be impossible.

In the North Eastern Province, where the drought is most severe, the main coping mechanisms for pastoralists is to move their livestock southwards to the Tana River delta, Galana Ranch and Mwingi District and Tsavo East National Park. To date, over one million head of livestock have moved into the Tana River Country in search of better pastures whilst other herds have moved to the Galana Ranch and Tsavo East National Park.

Conflicts over access to grazing between the pastoral communities from the north and the resident farming communities along the river are on the rise. Livestock diseases such as Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR), Contagious Caprine Pleuropneumonia (CCPP), Mange, Foot and Mouth Disease, and other notifiable diseases may occur, thus depleting further the pastoral assets and constraining their livelihoods. Note: a PPR outbreak has already been reported in Isiolo.


Response to Emergency 

Kenya has not seen an emergency of this magnitude before and the Government, NGOs and international agencies (including the UK Department for International Development and the Disaster Emergency Committee) have moved quickly to raise funds to provide food, water and shelter for those worst affected by the disaster. Whilst these short term measures are clearly a crucial initial response to save lives, there is a longer concern about whether people who have moved to the massive emergency refugees camps will ever be able to return to their pastoral livelihoods.

One area that Kenyan and international organisations have been struggling with is how to maintain a breeding nucleus of cattle and goats on an increasingly limited food resource. One response that the government and NGOs such as Oxfam is trying is de-stocking the livestock commercially and through slaughter for food/meat distribution. However, it has always been difficult to convince e pastoralists to give up their animals especially when they are little more than skin and bones with no monetary value.

One option that does offer some hope is to protect livestock herds that have moved into areas with better pastures still persist such as the South East of the country around the Tana River. By providing some grazing and additional forage supplies it may be possible to keep some of these animals alive until the new rains come further North. However, there are many challenges including the risk of disease outbreaks in animals which are already weak and whose immune status is poor and the movement and clustering of animals makes disease transmission more likely. In addition there are endemic diseases such as trypanosomiasis which incoming livestock will have no resistance to.

In order to try and assist the pastoralists who have managed to move their stock south, a number of organisations have set up an emergency veterinary response. One of these, VETAID Kenya, is a local East African NGO which has been working in the region for over 20 years providing veterinary support for pastoralists. As a Kenyan organisation Vetaid has the particular advantage that it is able to mobilise veterinary teams rapidly and deliver effective interventions in the field. It also works closely with the FAO, Ministry of Livestock and other veterinary partners (Veterinaires Sans Frontieres (VSF) - Belgium, VSF-Suisse, and VSF-Germany) to try and protect these herds.


Proposed intervention

VETAID Kenya is already working in the affected areas providing the following support for pastoralists and their livestock:

1. De-worming of stock within the Tana River delta to reduce parasite burdens and minimize nutritional stress

2. Vaccination against PPR, CCPP, sheep and goats pox, enterotoxaemia, Blackquarter, anthrax and CBPP

3. Providing pour-ons to control Tsetse flies and protect against Trypanosomiasis

4. Promoting de-stocking for food by purchasing livestock in good condition, slaughter and distribution of the meat to the communities

The approaches are already providing of benefit to the small number of pastoralists who have been reached. It is proposed to expand these activities to benefit a far larger number of livestock in the coming 6 months.

Further information

Local contact : Dr Gabriel Turhasa, Vetaid Kenya (vetaidtz@gmail.com)

UK contact : Nick Short, RVC, London (nshort@rvc.ac.uk)