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| A goat herd in Somaliland by NatGeo |
The technology, which sends alerts for livestock
diseases between farmers and veterinarians, will also issues
alerts quickly about possible animal disease outbreaks and track wide-scale
vaccination campaigns.
Using
Global Positioning System (GPS) the technology helps to pinpoint with accuracy
and speed early warning signs for animal disease outbreaks in a matter of
seconds instead of weeks.
The
application, EpiCollect, will
help detect animal diseases quickly and these early warning can prevent death
of tens of thousands of animals, thus safeguarding livelihoods and food
security, and preventing diseases that can sometimes be passed to humans.
“The mobile phone technology aid in reporting
animal disease outbreaks, tracking vaccination campaigns and delivery of
veterinary treatments, such as de-worming animals,” said Robert Allport, FAO Kenya’s
Assistant Representative for Programme Implementation.
“Cellular
phones eliminate delays in receiving field data, since all the information is
relayed via the mobile network, after the information is assigned a geographic
location to be extremely accurate and available in real-time,” Allport said.
The mobile application is funded by FAO, the Royal Veterinary College and local NGO Vetaid to also track animals’ medical history via the
mobile Web
In a press statement FAO says the project has been successful in Kenya
where three out of four people now have a
mobile phone and more Kenyans are upgrading to Internet-enabled phones and
prices for the technology inevitably come down.
Although
only a third of Kenyans have access to the Internet at present, 99 percent of
those Internet subscriptions are for access from a mobile phone which made the
project viable.
EpiCollect
is set to do away with what has been happening some five years ago when veterinarians
would have to travel to remote locations, record data, and then travel back to
district-level offices to process the paperwork.
“Now data
is transmitted real time and includes total number of livestock in a herd, number
of animals vaccinated and herd movement during search of pasture and water which
is regularly update and stored online,” FAO said.
The EpiCollect
database is not searchable in online search engines which keeps sensitive
information safe and can only be accessed by national vertinary officers and
field vets who are assigned unique location code for each project.
“Presently
EpiCollect is only being used by field veterinarians with phones provided by
Google Kenya for the testing phase but it will be available to village elders
and well-established networks of community animal health workers,” it said.
FAO is
also set to use the same technology for better link to livestock producers with
markets and livestock traders.
“Traders and
sellers can relay information to central point about how many animals they have
to make markets function efficiently with transparent pricing and collective
bargains,” FAO Kenya’s Allport said.
The same
technology has been used by FAO’s, Oxfam and Nokia using Nokia Data Gathering
(NDG) to monitor water points in pastoralist areas as an early warning
indicator for drought in Kenya and Ethiopia where communities monitor water
levels regularly via Internet-enabled phones.
In the
Karamoja area of neighbouring Uganda, the same NDG system is being used by
local chiefs to monitor drought indicators to allow for early response.
Manuel Odeny © 2013
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