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Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda

People in northern Uganda are currently rebuilding their lives after a lengthy period of conflict. To facilitate this, the Ugandan government and donors have promoted investment in pigs as an important strategy for generating income quickly and ensuring livelihood security. In this context, animal h...

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Autores principales: Arvidsson, Anna, Fischer, Klara, Hansen, Kjell, Sternberg-Lewerin, Susanna, Chenais, Erika
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8960384/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35359673
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.773903
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author Arvidsson, Anna
Fischer, Klara
Hansen, Kjell
Sternberg-Lewerin, Susanna
Chenais, Erika
author_facet Arvidsson, Anna
Fischer, Klara
Hansen, Kjell
Sternberg-Lewerin, Susanna
Chenais, Erika
author_sort Arvidsson, Anna
collection PubMed
description People in northern Uganda are currently rebuilding their lives after a lengthy period of conflict. To facilitate this, the Ugandan government and donors have promoted investment in pigs as an important strategy for generating income quickly and ensuring livelihood security. In this context, animal health issues are an acknowledged challenge, creating uncertainty for animal owners who risk losing both their animals and income. This paper draws on policy documents guiding the veterinary sector, interviews with faculty staff at Makerere University and with veterinarians and paraprofessionals in northern Uganda, and ethnographic fieldwork in smallholder communities. The aims of this study were to contribute to an understanding of the structure of veterinary support and its dominant development narratives in policy and veterinary education and of the way in which dominant discourses and practices affect smallholders' ability to treat sick animals. Particular attention was paid to the role of paraprofessionals, here referring to actors with varied levels of training who provide animal health services mainly in rural areas. The results suggest that veterinary researchers, field veterinarians and government officials in agricultural policy share a common discourse in which making smallholders more business-minded and commercializing smallholder production are important elements in reducing rural poverty in Uganda. This way of framing smallholder livestock production overlooks other important challenges faced by smallholders in their livestock production, as well as alternative views of agricultural development. The public veterinary sector is massively under-resourced; thus while inadequately trained paraprofessionals and insufficient veterinary support currently present a risks to animal health, paraprofessionals fulfill an important role for smallholders unable to access the public veterinary sector. The dominant discourse framing paraprofessionals as “quacks” tends to downplay how important they are to smallholders by mainly highlighting the negative outcomes for animal healthcare resulting from their lack of formalized training. The conclusions of this study are that both animal health and smallholders' livelihoods would benefit from closer collaboration between veterinarians and paraprofessionals and from a better understanding of smallholders' needs.
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spelling pubmed-89603842022-03-30 Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda Arvidsson, Anna Fischer, Klara Hansen, Kjell Sternberg-Lewerin, Susanna Chenais, Erika Front Vet Sci Veterinary Science People in northern Uganda are currently rebuilding their lives after a lengthy period of conflict. To facilitate this, the Ugandan government and donors have promoted investment in pigs as an important strategy for generating income quickly and ensuring livelihood security. In this context, animal health issues are an acknowledged challenge, creating uncertainty for animal owners who risk losing both their animals and income. This paper draws on policy documents guiding the veterinary sector, interviews with faculty staff at Makerere University and with veterinarians and paraprofessionals in northern Uganda, and ethnographic fieldwork in smallholder communities. The aims of this study were to contribute to an understanding of the structure of veterinary support and its dominant development narratives in policy and veterinary education and of the way in which dominant discourses and practices affect smallholders' ability to treat sick animals. Particular attention was paid to the role of paraprofessionals, here referring to actors with varied levels of training who provide animal health services mainly in rural areas. The results suggest that veterinary researchers, field veterinarians and government officials in agricultural policy share a common discourse in which making smallholders more business-minded and commercializing smallholder production are important elements in reducing rural poverty in Uganda. This way of framing smallholder livestock production overlooks other important challenges faced by smallholders in their livestock production, as well as alternative views of agricultural development. The public veterinary sector is massively under-resourced; thus while inadequately trained paraprofessionals and insufficient veterinary support currently present a risks to animal health, paraprofessionals fulfill an important role for smallholders unable to access the public veterinary sector. The dominant discourse framing paraprofessionals as “quacks” tends to downplay how important they are to smallholders by mainly highlighting the negative outcomes for animal healthcare resulting from their lack of formalized training. The conclusions of this study are that both animal health and smallholders' livelihoods would benefit from closer collaboration between veterinarians and paraprofessionals and from a better understanding of smallholders' needs. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8960384/ /pubmed/35359673 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.773903 Text en Copyright © 2022 Arvidsson, Fischer, Hansen, Sternberg-Lewerin and Chenais. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Veterinary Science
Arvidsson, Anna
Fischer, Klara
Hansen, Kjell
Sternberg-Lewerin, Susanna
Chenais, Erika
Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda
title Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda
title_full Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda
title_fullStr Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda
title_full_unstemmed Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda
title_short Diverging Discourses: Animal Health Challenges and Veterinary Care in Northern Uganda
title_sort diverging discourses: animal health challenges and veterinary care in northern uganda
topic Veterinary Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8960384/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35359673
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.773903
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