Socio-economic impact analysis of livestock disease control programmes with special reference to ticks and tick-borne diseases.

The outbreak of East Coast fever in the beginning of the century lead to the introduction of the plunge dip system to control the disease. This approach focused on eradicating the vectors (i .e. ticks) that transmitted the disease. The successful eradication of the disease in 1954 was mainly through the intensive use of acaricides. The fundamental objectives of this study is to detennine whether there is continued justification for controlling ticks and tick-borne diseases through dipping, as well as identifying the impact of tick control to the rural household. The study was conducted in two veterinary zones located in the Venda region of the Northern Province, namely the Yellow Line and the Open area. A sample of 125 respondents was taken from livestock fanners in the selected areas within the aforementioned zones. Data was accumulated by the use of a structured questionnaire, observations, as well as discussions with fanners. III Cattle dipping is perfonned to achieve both the economic, cultural and the social role with the majority of respondents (97%) fanning with cattle both for commercial and subsistence purposes. The value of cattle has been estimated to be Rl 152. A number of criteria have been used to estimate this value. These are the value of sales, milk, draught power and manure, and are quantified using the replacement value method. Eleven percent of the respondents expressed some dissatisfaction with the classical tick control method (plunge dip). The development of tick resistance to successive acaricide compounds is a major problem stated by 79% of the dissatisfied fanners . As a result, most of the respondents (61 %) supplement dipping with either modem or traditional tick control measures such as hand picking. The surveys amongst rural households show a 3% mortality rate in spite of the existence of the programme. It is estimated that the mortality rate would have been 4% without the control programme. Cost-benefit analysis revealed a benefit-cost ratio of 0.8 (i.e.