Relationship between animal health and livestock farmers’ wellbeing in Ghana: beyond zoonoses
Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC Public Health
Abstract
Introduction Livestock production is a key livelihood source for many people in developing countries. Poor control
of livestock diseases hamper livestock productivity, threatening farmers’ wellbeing and food security. This study
estimates the effect of livestock mortalities attributable to disease on the wellbeing of livestock farmers.
Methods Overall, 350 ruminant livestock farmers were randomly selected from three districts located in the north,
middle and southern belts of Ghana. Mixed-effect linear regression models were used to estimate the relationship
between animal health and farmer wellbeing. Farmer wellbeing was assessed using the WHOQOL-BREF tool, as the
mean quality-of-life in four domains (physical, psychological, social, and environmental). Animal health was assessed
as annual livestock mortalities to diseases adjusted for herd size, and standardized in tropical livestock units to
account for different ruminant livestock species. We adjusted for the potential confounding effect of farmers’ age,
sex, educational attainment, farmland size, socio-economic status, perception of disease risk to herd, satisfaction with
health, previous experience of disease outbreaks in herds, and social support availability by including these as fixed
effects, and community as random effects, in a pre-specified model.
Results Our results showed that farmers had a median score of 65.5 out of 100 (IQR: 56.6 to 73.2) on the wellbeing
scale. The farmers’ reported on average (median) 10% (IQR: 0 to 23) annual herd mortalities to diseases. There was
a significantly negative relationship between increasing level of animal disease-induced mortality in herds and
farmers’ wellbeing. Specifically, our model predicted an expected difference in farmers’ wellbeing score of 7.9 (95%CI
1.50 to 14.39) between a farmer without any herd mortalities to diseases compared to a (hypothetical) farmer
with 100% of herd mortalities caused by diseases in a farming year. Thus, there is a reduction of approximately 0.8
wellbeing points of farmers, for the average of 10% disease-induced herd mortalities experienced.
Conclusions Disease-induced livestock mortalities have a significant negative effect on farmers’ wellbeing,
particularly in the physical and psychological domains. This suggests that veterinary service policies addressing
disease risks in livestock, could contribute to improving the wellbeing of livestock dependent populations, and public
food securit
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Wellbeing, Quality of life, Livestock farmers, Livestock diseases