In Ghana, there are very few veterinarians. In 2015, there was a total of 704, with an average of 60 vets per region.43 A comparison with the numbers of public medical officers in the country suggests
just how small these numbers are. Schelling et al. (2005) noted that in rural Africa, vets used to be seen as the ‘most extensively distributed, highly educated human resource’. In Ghana in 2015 however, the local medical sector is much more extensive than the veterinary sector, with just above 50.000 medical doctors and nurses (GHS, 2016). As a result of the shortage of vets, some areas do not have a veterinary clinic. In 2008, there were only 59 vet district offices for a total of 171 districts (Diop et al., 2012).
In Ghana, vets can occupy a variety of positions and grades (see Appendix D). However, for analytical purposes, in this thesis, I consider two main categories of veterinary officers: veterinary surgeons and veterinary technicians.44 Vet surgeons hold doctorates in veterinary medicine and have studied at the
post-graduate university level whereas vet technicians hold only undergraduate degrees in animal health. I chose to refer to both surgeons and technicians as ‘vets’ in this thesis as among my participants, as both categories were taking decisions and action in regard to animal health in Ghana. In addition, in the veterinary services, people with both qualifications operated across the three levels of administration: district, regional, and national.45 I nonetheless specify when the distinction
between surgeons and technicians is relevant.
In Ghana, veterinary surgeons were credited with particular animal health expertise, primarily due to their higher qualification. The Veterinary Surgeons Law of 1992 established the legal status of veterinary surgeons through their membership in the veterinary council, and this was still applicable in 2015. Most of my participants who were surgeons had trained abroad for six years (in Eastern
43 Source: VSD administration, April 2015.
44 Veterinary surgeons are also called doctors and veterinary technicians are officially called para-professionals
or paravets. I explain why I only use the term ‘technician’ in this thesis in Chapter Two.
45 There were more technicians at the district level and more surgeons at the national level as higher qualified
vets would occupy management positions. However, highly experienced technicians were also working at the national level while there were also surgeons working in district vet offices.
Europe for most, but also in Germany, the UK, Cuba, Nigeria and Kenya for some),46 as there was no
school of veterinary medicine teaching at the post-graduate level in Ghana until the last decade. Most vet surgeons I met had followed similar career paths and had moved from studying overseas to acting as district vet officers to working at the VSD HQ. Over the course of their careers, vet surgeons would often be posted to different districts or regions in the country and would then, after a period of time, end up working in Accra. Sometimes, they would even be asked to go back practising in district vet clinics, after having occupied high management/policy positions at the VSD, as the example of Dr H’s career demonstrates:
Interview notes: When I met Dr H, we talked about his career path in the veterinary services of
Ghana. He graduated in veterinary science (with a speciality in tropical medicine) in Germany in 1981 and started working as a district vet in Ghana the following year. At the time, vets were generally in charge of three or four districts at a time. After 12 years of work in districts, he undertook a course in Agricultural Resource Management and obtained a Diploma in Agricultural Administration at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration. He went back to being a district vet officer for a while and then became a regional vet officer for 14 years. After that, he was appointed deputy director of the VSD and finally director (Chief Veterinary Officer). After two years at the head of the veterinary services, he turned 60, so had to retire from his position as VSD director. Since then, he has been the registrar of the veterinary council of Ghana and has worked on a contract-basis with the VSD in a small governmental district clinic. He explained that the main factor for this progression from a local field veterinarian to higher levels of bureaucracy was age and regular promotions - generally every three years –which were based on vet officers having satisfied their basic duties. Every director of the VSD had first been a district vet, a regional director and a deputy director (national level). The choice between two people of equal grade for one position depended on their date of birth, not merit, and therefore the most senior vets were prioritised.#13
Dr H’s career path represented a classic example of someone who had ‘climbed the ladder’ in the veterinary services from the local to the national level, and many of the senior vets I interviewed had undertaken, or were following, a similar path.
While vet surgeons represented the most knowledgeable workforce in the profession, in Ghana, veterinary technicians constituted the bulk of the workforce (88%) at the time of my fieldwork.47 This
46 I learned this from interviews and other sources (an article online: http://ugfile.com/knust-trained- veterinary-doctors-are-first-to-be-locally-trained-and-inducted-in-ghana/, Oppong, 1999). Ghanians were offered scholarships to study abroad, especially in the 80s and early 90s due to cold war-related diplomatic interests (Oppong, 1999).
47 There were 617 vet technicians and 87 vet surgeons officially registered in Ghana (VSD, 24.04.15). The
number of vet surgeons is likely to have decreased since an article published on the 23.08.2017 states that there were 32 ‘practising’ surgeons (Ghana News Agency: http://citifmonline.com/2017/08/23/ghana-has- only-32-practicing-veterinary-doctors-council/ ).
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is typical in countries where the veterinary workforce remains mainly public (Smith, 2001). The role of vet technicians evolved from the duties of individuals called ‘drug dispensers’ in the British Empire’s veterinary department in Ghana (Oppong, 1999). In 1922, the British administration established a Veterinary College in Tamale to train veterinary dispensers but, as a former student of the school wrote in a blog, the school closed in 1925 due to lack funding.48 According to this same source, the
USA provided funding to rebuild the college in the near-by town of Pong-Tamale, and it reopened in 1960. The school of Pong-Tamale was the only domestic teaching institute for animal health practitioners in Ghana until 2009 when two new national veterinary schools were established. Due to the importance of vet technicians in the history of the profession as well as their relatively high numbers in Ghana, in 2015, my participants who were vet technicians felt a strong sense of belonging to the Ghanaian veterinary culture and traditions.
However, despite the fact that technicians were much more numerous than surgeons, they were yet not included in legal texts. For instance, The Veterinary Surgeons Law (1992) did not include reference to vet technicians and thus, they lacked official status.49 This represented a problem for vet
technicians who were demanding more recognition and representation at higher levels in 2015. Prior to new legislation in 2015, vet technicians also lacked representation in the Veterinary Council and the Ghanaian Veterinary Medical Association. There was, therefore, less prestige linked to being a vet technician and fewer opportunities for technicians to climb the professional ladder, and they aspired to more recognition and rights. As a senior vet technician put it: ‘We [vet technicians] are the majority
but we are considered as the minority because we are not officially represented’.#9 I discuss this further in Chapter Four.
The Ghanaian system of animal health management is illustrated in diagrams in figures below, which situate the official role played by different units of the VSD as well as their key partners prior to the ‘recentralisation’ of the VSD in January 2015.
Figure 2 and Figure 3 illustrate the hierarchical organisation of the VSD with functions pertaining to specific veterinary positions. In Figure 2, we see that resources flow not only in a top-down fashion from the international and national levels to the local level, but also from the local level up to the
48 The blog of Richard, a veterinary technician, is available here: http://vetcogh.blogspot.co.uk/ (last visited on
04.12.2017).
national level through service charges which are collected by district vets from animal owners. Funding is also shared at the national level between ministries and the VSD, and at the local level between district vet offices and the local MoFA and district assemblies.
The diagram in Figure 3 presents the official system of general animal disease surveillance in which district vet officers receive information about suspect disease cases through notifications from animal owners or through farm/household visits. Following this, the regional vet office may need to carry out diagnostic tests at the regional lab and relay information coming up from district offices to the VSD HQ in Accra. The VSD HQ, and the epidemiology team, in particular, may also instigate further tests in the national level laboratories to diagnose a disease. The VSD HQ then report the disease to MoFA as well as to international organisations (OIE, Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources of the African Union – AU-IBAR) through online platforms (World Animal Health Information Database – WAHIS50,
Animal Resources Information System51 ). In addition, an annual performance report for MoFA is
shared within and outside the Ministry. From the district to Accra, every vet has a specific role to play in animal disease reporting and management.
50 Available at: http://www.oie.int/wahis_2/public/wahid.php/Wahidhome/Home 51 Available at: https://au-aris.org/
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Figure 2. Government-related resource flows for animal disease Management.
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Figure 3. Official reporting system and general animal disease surveillance.
44
The diagram in Figure 4 shows what should happen in the case of a serious outbreak requiring significant disease control interventions. Since information about disease cases must be communicated upwards quickly, district vets are encouraged to call regional or national vet officers on the phone as well as submit forms (VF1 is such a form, and can be seen in Appendix E) to report a disease event so that the necessary resources and/or scientific support can be dispatched to affected and at-risk regions.
Figure 4. Diagram representing the official system to control disease outbreak in region A.
(diagram designed by the researcher)
These diagrams illustrate the complexity of flows of resources, decisions and actions linked to animal disease management in Ghana. Vets constitute the central actors but they also rely on and report to many other key actors within and outside of their home ministry.
To sum up, vets in Ghana hold various grades, positions, and qualifications. For vet surgeons, this often involves upgrading from the local to the national level after having worked in different parts of the country. Vet technicians do not have this career structure and tend to remain in local level positions. However, they all operate in a very hierarchical, well-structured but complex system and with clear roles for animal health management. Such a system should, in theory, allow for good disease surveillance and, in turn, disease control (Dufour et al., 2006). The next section examines how national policies envisage utilizing this veterinary system in order to manage animal diseases and especially zoonoses.