Abstract
Objective: The present study was conducted in New Sandwip island ahajerchar) of the Meghna estuary, Noakhali to explore animal species are being reared, their disease status, and also to finding out the constraints and opportunitities for keeping livestock in the island.Materials: Considering local knowledge as an epidemiological intelligence, the livestock species and their disease profile as well as livestock keeping problems were assessed through two focus group discussion with informants' interview using Participatory Disease Searching (PDS) tools. The interview was conducted predominantly using semi-structured questionnaire (SSI) and other participatory epidemiology(PE) tools such as simple ranking (SR), pair-wise ranking (PWR), proportional pilling (PP) and transect work (visualization) were applied with flexibility to collect information.Results: PDS tools identified sheep (69%) is the main livestock species followed by cattle (16%) and buffalo (15%) in the island. The Peste des Petits Ruminant (PPR) in sheep (90%), anthrax in cattle (52%) and Haemorrgic Septicemia (HS) in buffalo (59%) were confirmed as top important species-wise diseases via the study. This place is prospect for sheep and buffalo raising rather than cattle. Lack of of shelter (Khella) for keeping livestock during adverse climatic condition, no access of portable water along with inadequate veterinary health care facilities were recognized as constraints for livestock raising in this island.Conclusion: This place is potential for sheep and buffalo raising rather than cattle. The study has validated the significance of accepting participatory disease searching tool in order to capture voluntarily submitted epidemiological data towards establishing a cost effective, unique national disease surveillance system in Bangladesh.
Highlights
Livestock is one of the main element of agriculture makes manifold offerings to the growth and development in the agricultural sector of Bangladesh
Semi Structured Interview(SSI) format Focus group discussion (FGD) revealed that livestock being raised as free range system in 'Bathan' with very limited veterinary services and no extra feed and mineral supplementations allowed for livestock
The island has a total of 14 bathan where approximately 70,000 number of 3 species livestock being raised
Summary
Livestock production is the second highest among all other sub-sectors of agriculture in Bangladesh (BER, 2012). The livestock resources of Bangladesh are mainly based on cattle, goat, sheep, buffalo, and poultry, and contribute in family income generation as well as a source of protein in rural Bangladesh. As growing of population and urbanization, the agricultural land is gradually declined and remaining maximum land is being allocated for crop production rather than animal grazing pasture land. The country has 23.63 million cattle, 25.60 million goat, 3.27 million sheep, 1.46 million buffalo, 261.77 million poultry and 50.52 million duck (DLS, 2015). Variability in geographical features and climatic condition causes unevenness in animal population throughout the country, for example, buffalo is suitable in coastal areas since the swampy environment is conducive for buffalo raising
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