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COMACO Fights Newcastle Disease in Luangwa Valley

Newcastle disease kills up to 80% of village chickens in rural communities throughout Zambia and leaves people without an important source of animal protein. The problem is particularly serious in Luangwa Valley, and affected families sometimes compensate this loss by illegal killing of wildlife. Surveys conducted by WCS show that many chickens along the Valley die from this disease due to poor husbandry practices, like high exposure to parasites, poor diets and unclean drinking water. With the technical support of International Rural Poultry Centre (IRPC) and with additional support from Cornell University and the Royal Norwegian Embassy, COMACO has conducted community-wide trainings in better husbandry practices and initiated a large-scale vaccination campaign with a new heat-tolerant vaccine designed for conditions like Luangwa Valley.

Last year, with the help of Briggitte Bagnal, Filomena DosAnjos and Robyn Alders from IRPC, COMACO undertook poultry-vaccination an appraisal in selected areas of Chama, Mambwe and Lundazi districts to learn how families were coping with the New castle disease and the impact the disease had on local livelihoods. Many farmers made themselves available for this exercise and shared their difficulties and insights on the problems caused by this disease. Field teams also helped organize farmers into poultry producer groups and trained them in poultry management including disease identification, bird nutrition, flock management and disease control.

COMACO conducted its first vaccination exercise in July 2007 in Kakumbi, Nsefu, Mwanya, Chitungulu and Chifunda chiefdoms of the Luangwa valley. Two Villages Area Groups (VAGs) in each of the chiefdoms were selected for trials, one for control and another one as the pilot to better understand the effects of the vaccine on the birds. COMACO vaccinated the birds at a cost of K250 per chicken of which K75 went towards procuring more vaccines so as to make the program sustainable and K175 was paid to the vaccinators as they are volunteers chosen by the community members within the community.

In November 2007 the second round of the vaccination campaign was conducted and allowed more critical analysis of the vaccination results and general data collection. In addition, the analysis provided simple evaluation and monitoring systems of both technical and socio-economic indicators used by both community vaccinators and supervising agencies. The exercise further provided an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the July 2007 first vaccination campaign aimed at reducing the number of birds loses through Newcastle disease. The program has just completed the third vaccination campaign marking the end of the pilot vaccination cycle.

This last vaccination campaign was so special in the programme that IRPC again sent Briggitte Bagna,l a Social Anthropologist/PRA/Gender specialist, who was very determined to help maintain the continuity of the vaccination programme through COMACO. She observed that the programme was running in the proper way and that she was particularly impressed with the monitoring tools put in place. “Due to the success of the campaign and the farmers’ request, it is recommended to expand the vaccination activity to the control area. Maybe control activity in new area can be suspended as the efficacy of the vaccine has been already demonstrated,” said Briggitte. She further noted that the same vaccinators could be maintained and encouraged to work in the ex control area although it might be far from their home.

Lean Mwansa, a member of a poultry producer group from Mnkhanya village lamented how she lost all her birds poultry before she joined COMACO. She revealed that all chickens had died from the Newcastle disease. “Chickens help us a lot, for example eggs are good for children’s porridge either made from maize or sorghum, and when we don’t have money, it is easily sell the chicken and raise money to solve the problem. Unfortunately for me, I lost all my chicken from the Newcastle disease,” Lean explained. Lean, however, expressed gratitude towards what COMACO was doing and she was optimistic that she would be able to raise another flock of birds since COMACO had assured the producer group members that the pilot time for the control of New castle was now over and that IRPC has passed a recommendation to extend the vaccinations to other areas though on a steady scale.

Alleviating poverty through different strategies is a core responsibility of COMACO in Zambia. COMACO promotes improvement of Village poultry production in communities surrounding the Luangwa valley through provision of technical training skills in poultry husbandry. Increased poultry production enables households to have a more reliable source of proteins, income and improved nutrition and food security. Since COMACO started vaccination campaigns over, 20,108 birds have been vaccinated against Newcastle.