Guillaume Lhermie

and 5 more

Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) is a contagious disease affecting small ruminants. It has been targeted by the global community for eradication within the next 10 years. Implementing eradication requires significant financial efforts, human resources, coordination among actors, and individual commitments. The objective of this study is to estimate the cost of PPR at household level, thereby providing economic information about the potential benefits for small ruminant keepers of PPR control and management strategies. Fifteen Sub-Saharan countries are included in this study, for which publicly available household level data assembled by FAO were used. We built a bioeconomic model to estimate the impact of PPR for a standardized theoretical area where each household raises an average herd comprising either 6 goats or 3 sheep and their offspring. We then used the outputs of the model to estimate the income loss due to PPR at household level. We constructed different income scenarios to account for the variability of small ruminant income in total annual income. The household income losses ranged from 0.6 to 44.8 percent of the total annual income. The percentages vary depending on the income scenario and on the gross annual economic impact of PPR on small ruminant production, which ranges from 25 to 80 percent based on the results of the bioeconomic model. Regardless of the income scenario, households in lower income quintiles are relatively more affected by PPR than households in upper quintiles. As expected, the more small ruminant production contributes to household income the greater the impact. We provide here estimates that may help, from a policy perspective, identifying the most relevant strategies and tailoring them at regional level to mitigate PPR impacts.