You are here » Home » Telling Our Story
Success Story
Veterinary clinics keep
Badakhshan’s livestock
alive and healthy
Veterinary Care Saves Animals, Enriches Families
Photo: USAID/David DeVoss
Khodaar, a herdsman from the village
of Sumdara in Badakhshan, is grateful
that USAID-funded clinics kept his goats
healthy, enabling him to earn a profit on
their sale.
“I never was able to save a
penny, because with fewer
goats to sell, all the money I
earned went to buy food for my
eight children,” said Khodaar.
“This year not a single animal
died. Now when the children
need pencils and notebooks, I
can afford to buy them.”
Animal husbandry is an unforgiving profession in Afghanistan.
Economic survival depends on the number of sheep, goats, and
cattle a family can sell each year. However, the lack of veterinary
care in many areas leads to animal deaths, impoverishing families
and endangering Afghanistan’s food supply. USAID-funded
veterinary clinics are changing that by keeping animals healthy.
In Badakhshan Province, many families depend on healthy livestock
to make a living. In the summer, 1.8 million herd animals graze
in the remote highland pastures and face constant threats from
disease and parasites. It is common for a herdsman to lose nearly
half of his flock by autumn.
Khodaar, a herdsman from the village of Sumdara, knows the
problem well. “For years I’d build my flock to 100 animals only to
lose 30 to 40 to disease,” he said. “Fifty goats will produce 30 to
40 kids if there’s no disease. But year after year I’d end up with 15
because the majority died.”
Today, animals are surviving at a much higher rate thanks to a
USAID program that brings veterinary services to Afghanistan’s
herdsmen. In Badakhshan, USAID and the Dutch Committee for
Afghanistan have provided training to nearly 200 veterinary workers
to care for the region’s flocks and have constructed 35 veterinary
field clinics. The clinics are supplied with medications, vaccines,
and motorcycles which are used to reach outlying communities.
Together, the animal healthcare workers vaccinate an average of
50,000 animals each month.
More serious animal health problems are addressed by the newly
constructed Provincial Veterinary Center in Faizabad, which has
modern laboratory and research facilities.
The USAID-trained veterinary workers have already made a
difference in the lives of villagers and their livestock. This year,
Khodaar’s goats stayed healthy, so he earned enough money to
finish building a house and send his children to school.
“I never was able to save a penny, because with fewer goats to
sell, all the money I earned went to buy food for my eight children,”
said Khodaar. “This year not a single animal died. Now when the
children need pencils and notebooks, I can afford to buy them.”
Print-friendly version of this page (533kb - PDF)
Click here for high-res photo
Back to Top ^
|
RSS Feed for Recent Telling Our Story Updates
