Separate veterinary services from mainstream agriculture (Back Page)

THE Ghana Veterinary Medical Association (GVMA) has called for the separation of veterinary services from mainstream agriculture at all levels to enhance an effective veterinary health delivery system.
It explained that the situation where veterinary activities had been reduced and subsumed under general agriculture as is the case at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), was negatively affecting the country’s animal healthcare delivery.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra, the President of the GVMA, Dr K.B. Darkwa, said that veterinary science is a specialised field and should therefore not be forced under other disciplines where the personnel have no knowledge in veterinary practice and could therefore not promote it effectively.
He said to achieve the best for the sector the association had recommended for a Ghana Veterinary Health Service within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) to operate as a separate entity to improve service delivery.
He also said in order to underline the new status of the veterinary service and emphasise its importance within the MoFA, the ministry should be redesignated as the Ministry of Agriculture and Veterinary Services to reflect the two different disciplines which also operate differently.
Dr Darkwa, who is also the Executive Director of the La Veterinary Hospital in Accra, said to get the best of animal health practice in Ghana, there should be a structure where veterinary activities in the districts and the regions would be supervised by veterinary officers at the head office instead of the current situation where agriculturists were made to perform that role.
In a document titled “A Position by the Veterinary Council of Ghana on Public Sector Reforms and Placement of the Veterinary Services”, the association said the once efficient veterinary services of Ghana built and nurtured over decades to attain a showpiece status in West Africa, was currently grossly underperforming.
The document said the association had noted with concern that MoFA in its quest to implement a decentralised and unified extension system in the country had downplayed and sometimes marginalised veterinary activities to the extent that the once vibrant national animal health delivery system had dropped to unacceptable levels.
“The attempt to subsume veterinary activities and veterinary surgeons under the general agriculture (crops) with vets working under the direct supervision and control of agriculturists designated as district and regional directors of agriculture who are even juniors in some cases, is strangulating the proper performance of veterinary functions in the ministry”, adds the document.
It, however, noted that the recommendation for the establishment of veterinary health service was not to have a system which would make the sector operate in isolation but would rather help it have strong linkages through collaboration with other relevant stakeholders for efficient and effective provision of veterinary health care in Ghana.