An efficient animal health service, which integrates the official public service (referred to here as “the veterinary service”) effectively with the private and associative sectors, is critical to livestock production and the protection of human health. Most such services in developing countries historically have been provided by the public veterinary service, but they have been set back by quality problems, and the efficiency of services has declined dramatically over the last decades. There is considerable potential to improve services by attaining a better balance between the public and the private sectors and between professional and paraprofessional veterinary staff. Actions needed to ensure an efficient animal health service include: Refocusing and strengthening public sector capacities to guide (although not necessarily carry out; see below) public good tasks, such as policy development, quarantine, disease surveillance (including early alert and rapid response), vaccination against the major diseases, and food safety. Developing private services for private good tasks, such as clinical treatments, vaccination against minor diseases, distribution and sale of veterinary medicines, and animal breeding. Establishing networks of community animal health workers, especially in more marginal areas, would enable the scarce human resources in public veterinary services to be used more efficiently.
Poor animal health and weak animal health services are the main reasons for losses in livestock production. Meanwhile, new and re-emerging zoonotic diseases—diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans, such as avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)—pose major threats to human health and the global economy. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, direct and indirect losses of meat, milk, and work output from all types of animal diseases are estimated at about US$2 billion a year, and these losses especially affect poor people. By the end of 2005, avian influenza inIndonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam had already caused economic losses exceeding US$1 billion. Losses to BSE are estimated to be at least US$20 billion. The quality of animal health services has declined for several reasons, which vary by country and region. In many regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America , and the transition economies, structural adjustment programs reduced funding for veterinary departments. Even so, some regions continued to recruit new staff for veterinary services. In Africa, for example, staff numbers in most public veterinary services increased between 1985 and 2003; as a result, the ratio of expenditure on salaries to expenditure on recurrent costs rose to 85:15 in many African countries, compared to an optimal 60:40 (de Haan and Bekure 1991; Gauthier, Simeon, and de Haan 1999). Despite funding reductions, the public services have often continued to provide the full range of services, whether they are of a public or private good nature, thereby spreading their scarce resources, especially operating and investment funds, too thinly. In the transition economies, the veterinary services shifted from focusing on large herds in collective farms to a livestock population privatized across millions of small farms (box 1.26).   
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