The cost of national prevention systems for animal diseases and zoonoses in developing and transition countries

This study, published in October 2009 by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), aimed to estimate the essential costs of veterinary prevention systems in sample countries and to develop economic indicators for the veterinary performance evaluation provided by the OIE Tool for the Evaluation of Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS Tool). Full sets of data were collected from seven developing and transition countries. The sources used were literature review, a questionnaire survey and country visits by the core expert team. The total costs of national prevention systems (NPS), net of donor programmes, ranged from 10 million international dollars in Kyrgyzstan to 167 million international dollars in Turkey. These costs are associated with the size of the livestock sector, in veterinary livestock units (VLUs), and national income. It was concluded that NPS cost per VLU provides a meaningful comparative measure of the cost of service provision, varying from 1.92 international dollars in Uganda to 9.40 international dollars in Turkey. The relationship with national income provides estimated indicators of expected NPS costs for other countries. Introduction of quantitative measures to PVS Evaluations would help when assessing the degree of compliance with OIE standards.