53. The measures recently introduced in animal health care in SSA are still too new to provide a full and objective assessment of their impact. However, on the basis of progress to date, the following policies can be recommended.
(i) Imports and distribution of veterinary pharmaceuticals can be transferred to the private sector. The private sector also needs to be involved in vaccine production, although privatization here needs to be preceded by consolidation of SSA's many small laboratories into larger regional units.(ii) Full cost recovery for government services needs to be introduced as an essential prerequisite for any private involvement in veterinary services. Cost recovery has been widely introduced in SSA over the past decade and has yielded satisfactory results for clinical and prophylactic interventions, and with no immediately apparent negative impact on equity. It has been less successful in the more marginal activities like cattle dipping and artificial insemination.
(iii) Further measures are needed to redress the ratio between salary and non-salary operating costs of government services. While a number of countries have made progress in improving the operational efficiency of their public services, services in many countries still operate under salary/nonsalary ratios which do not allow efficient functioning.
(iv) In many African countries, the development of private non-professional veterinary services as part of producers' organizations would be the first step to privatization. Their representatives (auxiliaries), if properly trained, have been shown to be capable of carrying out most treatments correctly, and group formation around animal health has been an important precursor to other cooperative activities.
(v) The use of self-employed veterinarians has up till now not been successful and needs to be pursued more vigorous... They need to form the critical link between the government service and the private auxiliaries, and the present vacuum created by the missing link may endanger the success of the auxiliary-based system.
54. Thus, while the overall initial results are encouraging, any definite claim of success would be premature, and at this stage it is essential to continuously monitor the unfolding impact of these reform measures so that the conclusions of this report can be empirically tested. It seems that if this course is continued - supplemented with other technologies such as simple feed improvements, small stock development, smallholder cattle fattening and dairy operations, which have all shown some degree of promise in ongoing livestock projects - livestock should be able to play a catalytic role in SSA's agricultural development and alleviate the huge neat and milk deficit projected for SSA in the 21st century.
