My name is Megan Lee. I am a rising DVM/MPH 3^rd year student, and this summer 2017 I am engaging in my first Expanding Horizons funded research project.

I am interested in poverty and food insecurity in developing nations and am in the midst of conceptualizing my role as a foreign veterinarian in helping combat these hardships. Through the Silent Heroes Foundation and the One Health Central and Eastern Africa initiative, I am learning what research through an NGO looks like as a potential career option in southwestern Uganda.

My research project aims to understand the economic costs of animal production, with a particular focus on the socioeconomic costs for treating animal diseases and the economic losses due to failure of successful treatment. The end goal is to provide policy recommendations, formed in conjunction with the communities we interviewed after survey analysis, in order to establish both local and systemic changes to improve animal health and productivity.

Since beginning my survey, I’ve come to learn all of the ways that animals are culturally and economically very important to Ugandan farmers. They are sold in times of financial need which include family medical costs, school fees, and any emergencies that may arise. They are also slaughtered for special holidays and to welcome special guests, and are used for continual food production in the case of milk from cows or chickens from eggs, for example. This serves as validation for how animal health is crucial for human health and progress providing families with the ability to stay healthy and pursue educational aspirations. Additionally many of the districts we are interviewing in are close or within the Queen Elizabeth National Park, where livestock and wildlife can interact. Having vigilant disease surveillance and veterinary services in these areas is thus especially vital to preventing epidemics that can harm wildlife and/or livestock populations.

I quickly realized though that the road to better animal health and productivity cannot just focus on inadequate veterinary services and the ability of livestock owners to afford preventatives and treatments.  Factors that include adequate nutrition, husbandry practices, and adequate isolation from sick animals also play a role in animal health. Looking around at how short and dry the grasses currently are in the dry season and observing many ruminants free grazing in each village, I added in questions about the adequacy of the diet for livestock in the rainy versus dry season.

After speaking with a Ugandan field veterinarian, I learned that farmers tend to self treat their animals and only call a veterinarian when the animal is severely ill, which can negatively skew the perception of veterinarians for farmers and thereby discourage farmers from calling veterinarians. This led me to add in questions about whether farmers self treat before calling a veterinarian and why. Furthermore, I added in questions evaluating the efficacy of self treatment by farmers. I plan on evaluating farmers’ self-treatment and preventative protocols with both local and U.S. veterinarians to see how appropriately they view each of them in their expert opinion.

As I look through my survey data for patterns and as field work progresses, I am constantly writing down intervention ideas and additional questions I would like to ask in my focus groups as new ideas and considerations are constantly popping up unexpectedly. Though these ideas are still forming, I know that the policy recommendations will need to address economic costs to medical treatment, the inadequacy of pasture when it is dry, the lack of veterinarians, and farmer training and behavioral changes. I am considering local community and governmental interventions, as well as environmental adaptations and husbandry suggestions.

A healthy environment for these livestock with adequate nutrition and protections and effective preventative and treatment administration will be key to improving the health of the livestock here, and consequently the health and well-being of the people that depend on them. I hope together with these communities we can come up with solutions that can be adapted both immediately, long-term solutions to help in the dissemination of the interventions, and the sustainability of their effectiveness.