The Economic Significance and Control of Small Ruminant Viruses in North Africa and West Asia

Abstract

I would like to be able to answer the question that the title of the paper poses, particularly as it relates to the economic importance of viral diseases of small ruminants in the countries of North Africa and West Asia, but there have been no properly conducted assessments of the economic importance of healthy small ruminants. Without doubt they are important to the small farmer whose total wealth may be represented by the size of his sheep and goat flock. Diseases such as sheep and goat pox (capripox) and peste des petits ruminants (PPR) do cause major losses, but as the incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates for these diseases have not been properly investigated and the total small ruminant population is frequently unknown, economic evaluations are at best meaningless and at worst totally misleading. For a variety of reasons, cattle and their diseases have attracted much of the research effort, but recently more attention has been given to small ruminants which, in my opinion, are of far greater importance than cattle in many of the poorer communities (Fig. 1).