2294 part 1 final report.pdf - Agra CEAS Consulting

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Prevention and control of animal diseases worldwide Part I: Economic analysis: prevention versus outbreak costs 7. Conclusions It is difficult to predict the severity of the threats posed by Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs). Moreover, different issues arise depending on the nature of the disease. A disease such as HPAI, with its high public health relevance, poses a different set of challenges than a disease such as FMD which has purely commercial and socio-economic implications. Both diseases, however, have the potential to lead to substantial and even devastating consequences in terms of increased poverty, decreases in food security and social equity/stability in developing/transition countries. At the same time, the current state of Veterinary Services (VS) and preparedness levels in developing/transition countries pose a real and present threat to the prevention and control of TADs. As is demonstrated in the case studies and from the literature review, the various identified weaknesses essentially revolve around the key issue of the lack of funds and/or poor governance. Within a weaker economic environment and while these countries are struggling to catch up with the rest of the world, it is evident that VS have not been – more importantly have not consistently been – a priority in the use of relatively constrained public funds. Today more than ever, with increasing globalisation, the world’s ‘developed’ and ‘developing/transition’ countries are so interconnected that both the effects of TADs and the measures to prevent them can not be viewed in isolation. This call for a global approach in the fight against animal diseases, for which there is wide consensus in the reviewed literature that the VS have a crucial role to play as the providers of Global Public Goods. In the case of HPAI, while significant risk remains that the virus mutates to infect humans, as yet adaptation for human-to-human transmission has not occurred. However, the WHO considers it a probable (rather than a possible) scenario, and the key competent agencies for animal health (OIE/FAO) warn that the greater the shedding of virus from infected poultry the greater the risk of adaptation leading to a human pandemic. It is therefore clear that the disease must be contained efficiently and within a reasonable time frame. This being a transboundary disease, efficient containment can not take place unless all countries in the world are prepared to face a possible outbreak. The worldwide system for the prevention and control of HPAI can only be as strong as its weakest link. To date, the H5N1 has been most prevalent in SE Asia but it has spread relatively quickly to Africa and has made its appearance in the developed world (more recently with the February 2007 UK outbreak). This raises important strategic questions for policy-makers around the world. A key issue is the extent of the investment that needs to be undertaken to improve current systems to prevent TADs, not only in the specific context of the two diseases examined here (HPAI and FMD) but also more generally. To determine the appropriate level of investment, in purely economic terms, demands an analysis of the costs of the investment versus the benefits. As discussed in the Report, such an analysis in the strict sense of a CBA methodology has a number of limitations: • Firstly, this theme requires both detailed epidemiological and economic modelling, for which neither the methodology has been adequately developed nor the necessary data exists. • Second, in most cases, both the costs and the benefits extend beyond the boundaries of a specific disease. The interrelationships may be too complex to allow clear modelling. For example, general improvements in VS have implications for all diseases, in which case the resulting Civic Consulting • Agra CEAS Consulting 158
Prevention and control of animal diseases worldwide Part I: Economic analysis: prevention versus outbreak costs benefits (e.g. in terms of potential improvements in market access) can not clearly be defined because they can not be attributed to a specific livestock sector that may benefit from these improvements. • Third, these being transboundary diseases, the potential costs and benefits transcend national borders. In this case too, interrelationships are too complex to readily allow modelling. For example, the improvement of preventive capability in Nigeria should have major implications for neighbouring countries and the region, however relevant policies undertaken in the other countries also impact on the region. • Fourth, even where the costs and benefits can be examined in the context of a specific measure affecting a specific livestock sector (e.g. improved diagnostic laboratory capacity for HPAI), the resulting benefits are not always tangible or readily quantifiable. For example, in examining the potential benefits that may accrue from the avoidance of a human pandemic, only approximate estimates can be provided. • Fifth, it is difficult to isolate the potential benefits of the examined investment from other conjectural trends that may influence the outcome. For example, building a new diagnostic laboratory may improve detection of a disease but the likely benefit in terms of – say - the improved trade potential may be undermined by factors such as high production costs, poor marketing/distribution channels, poor infrastructure, trade policies, or the emergence of a new competitor in potential export markets. • Sixth, even where such analysis has been attempted, results depend heavily on the underlying assumptions and scenarios, and should therefore be interpreted within that context. The current project has examined the costs of specific measures, recognised by the competent agencies in this field as the minimum requirements for effective prevention and control, and has compared them to the costs of outbreaks in the particular case of HPAI. For the latter, it has developed a detailed model, which estimated the costs per country and extrapolating at global level, under different scenarios and assumptions. The extent of the investment on prevention will depend on preparedness levels in each country, which, as demonstrated in the case studies and the literature review can be extremely variable. Similarly, the extent of the benefit will depend on a range of factors including the duration, severity and geographical scale of the epidemic, economic factors and the potential consequences and scale of a human pandemic. It is therefore important to view the estimates of prevention costs and outbreak costs in terms of relative scale rather than as absolute figures, and within the context in which they have been produced. For this reason, a range of estimates is provided under a range of scenarios and assumptions, while our most likely scenario is modelled closely on past experience and data from the costs of actual outbreaks (this has been used as our baseline). It is noted that direct costs and losses, although extensive in themselves, are in fact the smallest element of the overall impact of an outbreak and therefore produce the smallest element of benefit accruing from improved prevention. While direct impacts are relatively easier to determine, indirect impacts are more cumbersome, especially as we move down the list from ripple to spill-over and wider society effects. Results should therefore be interpreted with caution the further we move away from the estimation of direct impacts. Civic Consulting • Agra CEAS Consulting 159
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