Watch Your Progress: Kenyan Farmers Lay Pasture Roads Without Disease

LOSIRIEN, Kenya (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The early morning calm of the Losirien Valley was broken by a cow bell while Benjamin Kerei led his herd of about fifty animals on a desiccated trail along the way. A dry bed in southwestern Kenya.

On a 10-kilometer trip to a nearby pasture, the 24-year-old was looking for new wildlife trails.

Like pastoralists from across the East African country, Kerei must keep his livestock away from wild animals to avoid exposing them to infectious diseases, some of which can be deadly for livestock and humans.

With droughts and floods reducing the amount of habitable land in Kenya, the search for enough food and water is pushing people and wildlife further into the territories of each.

As a result, cases of infectious diseases transmitted from humans to humans – known as zoonotic diseases – are on the rise, said Patrick Kimani, general manager of the Kenya Livestock Producers Association.

In recent years, some breeders have found a simple way to keep their livestock and their health.

They look for pasture routes that are not used by wildlife and tell them to others.

In the southern part of the Rift Valley in Kenya, Kerei – who started using the method two years ago – said that zoonotic diseases were very common but that farmers did not know how to treat them.

"That's why we've chosen to use safe grazing roads to reduce the risk of livestock coming into contact with sick wildlife," he said.

GENERAL CASES

In Kenya, there are at least 36 known zoonoses, according to Samuel Kahariri, chairman of the Kenya Veterinary Association (KVA). The most serious are brucellosis, Rift Valley fever, rabies and anthrax.

Most of these diseases are prevalent among pastoralist communities, Kahariri added.

Brucellosis, for example, is one of the most common zoonotic infections in the world.

Primarily transmitted by cattle, sheep, goats, elk and deer, it can be transmitted to humans through the consumption of raw meat or unpasteurized milk, causing flu-like symptoms.

Sam Kariuki, director of the Microbiology Research Center at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, estimated that about 750 Kenyans contract brucellosis each year.

However, maintaining uneven registers makes it impossible to obtain an accurate picture of the spread of zoonotic diseases, he noted.

The data show that the number of brucellosis cases has increased in recent years, said James Akoko, a researcher studying the disease at Maseno University in Kisumu County.

Akoko said the negative effects of climate change, combined with a growing population, meant more intense contact than ever before between humans, wildlife and livestock.

"People are encroaching on areas reserved for wild animals and this type of contact can create an opportunity for diseases to spread to different hosts," he said.

Brick towers

Pastors like Kerei are working hard to prevent this.

Once they identified routes that did not reach the wildlife territory, they marked them with small brick towers.

In addition to finding traces and faeces, they know that the presence of big cats such as lions and tick-eating birds indicates that grazing animals such as buffaloes and deer have moved into an area, said Paul Gathitu, a spokesman for Kenya Wildlife Service.

When this happens, the brick towers are dismantled, signaling to others that the road has become risky.

"It's a difficult task to ensure that our livestock do not share pastures or watering points with wildlife," Kerei said. "But that's the only cheap and readily available measure we have."

For the moment, this technique is mainly used by Maasai tribes in the Rift Valley and Borana in northern Kenya, said Abdulaziz Jama of the Pastoralists Capacity Development Program.

Anecdotal evidence from area elders confirms that the technique works where there is no other option for fighting diseases, he added.

"The use of safe grazing roads is one of many types of indigenous knowledge that helps marginalized communities fight climate change and zoonotic diseases when the national government has failed," he said.

ALERTS IN REAL TIME?

The government is trying to manage the spread of zoonotic diseases, in part because of the difficulty in detecting it, as pastoralists move from one place to another, said Kahariri of the KVA.

The problem is exacerbated by poor road and communication networks in areas where pastoralists live, which prevents them from sharing information with the government when a zoonotic disease appears, said Kahariri.

Ezekiel Kiamba, from Ildamat village in southeastern Kenya, said officials should do more to support farmers.

The 32-year-old farmer does not use safe grazing roads to protect his 80 cows. Instead, he hires a private veterinarian to regularly monitor and vaccinate his flock at $ 20 per dose.

He would like the government to use modern technologies to send real-time information about epidemics to rural communities.

"Some of us, pastors, have smartphones that the government could use to work with us and help manage zoonotic diseases," he said. "I'm still waiting for that to happen."