Dear All

I don't know if this is too late a contribution but I would like to ask that we keep the producers / keepers point of view in mind. It is for them after all that we are proposing to attempt PPR eradication. I understand the wish to focus on one disease in terms of progressing to eradication, it certainly makes a lot of technical sense. But we cannot imagine that this will happen rapidly. We have tools now that weren't available early on in RP eradication but whether that will dramatically decrease the amount of time are looking at to eradicate PPR is perhaps open to question. I would suggest that we are looking at 20 years to eradicate PPR. Funds are much tighter now than they were and our target beneficiaries may not have as much political influence as others who are competing for these funds. Might it help us to unlock the funds available if we can show an innovative synergy of how the funds will be used?

Perhaps a solution is to yes explicitly build a network and system for PPR eradication but equally explicitly design it so that it can be used for other purposes where countries and communities perceive other disease priorities. And to build it in such a way that it is a government / private sector partnership where possible. Vaccine shouldn't be supplied for free but perhaps it should also not be fully supplied only through official channels as far as the animal. Of course, this is a more complex system and therefore more difficult to establish and perhaps maintain. But purely governmental vaccination campaigns systems have frequently not worked well on their own.

If there is a voice that I have felt the lack of during the discussions so far, it is perhaps that of typical small ruminant livestock keepers. I'm sure some of the contributors do own small ruminants but can we find a way to involve those who rely on them for day to day living?

Regards

Nick Honhold

I think that some contributors did raise this issue, perhaps not so strongly, in session 1, but I agree that we must not neglect  the views of livestock owners in all that we plan and do with PPR.   I am sure that they would like to see the disease eradicated but I am less sure of how much of the work and effort in doing this they might be prepared to do and pay for. We don't know yet. Do we know the places where the control of PPR is the small ruminant farmer priority? Or do we know where it is perhaps much less of a priority even though it may be present?   
 
I also wonder how we can include their views in the proposed network; how we can get representation that is meaningful and global. I hope that PPR-GREN will be open to everyone who is genuinely interested in PPR eradication  and I hope this will mean a lot of active participants but clearly we cannot open up the "network" to all of the the world's small ruminant keepers.   Are there some influential small ruminant farmers' unions that we can encourage to join PPR-GREN, or some large co-operatives in affected areas? Or is this something that is most effectively managed at a national or perhaps regional level?
 
The subject will surely be discussed in more detail in one or more of the thematic groups in PPR-GREN  
 
Moderator. 

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