The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal and Fisheries Resources through the General Directorate of Veterinary Services organized on October 7 and 8, 2024 in Ouagadougou, a training for the benefit of the members of the Network for Epidemiological Surveillance of Animal Diseases and Zoonoses in Burkina Faso (RESUREP). The activity, which benefits from the financial support of the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) through the MODHEM+/DDC project, was launched this Monday by the project manager of the Minister in charge of animal resources, Dr. Nessan Désiré Coulibaly.Strengthen the capacities of RESUREP members on electronic collection of animal health data, retrain the skills of livestock agents, present and discuss the reporting of animal vaccination information.These are, among others, the objectives of the 48-hour training workshop organized for the benefit of RESUREP members from the 13 regions of Burkina Faso, on October 8 and 9, 2024 in Ouagadougou. According to the Director of Animal Health, Dr Madi Savadogo, the Ministry in charge of Animal Resources is in a dynamic of modernization on the collection of field data relating to animal health.To this end, it is important that stakeholders can master the use of tools, to enable not only rapid data collection, but also quality data collection to facilitate decision-making at the central level, indicated Dr Savadogo.For him, this training, which concerns data from the epidemic surveillance of animal diseases and zoonoses, but also vaccination data, is held every year with a view to updating the knowledge of agents."This allows us to improve a number of indicators in the collection and reporting of information on our different sites," he said.The Director General of Veterinary Services, Lieutenant-veterinarian Aboubacar Nacro indicated that the major innovation in this training is the feedback of data from the vaccination campaign through this channel of collection and processing of information.According to him, the data collection will be do ne with the KoBotoolbox application. For this, he invited the 84 participants, mostly from the regions, to appropriate this tool necessary for the compilation of information on animal health.For the coordinator of the project to improve livestock mobility and agropastoralist income through the use of mobile telephony and satellite imagery / pastoral infrastructure component (MODHEM+/DDC), Kassoum Ouédraogo, the project is very involved with the Ministry in charge of Animal Resources on issues related to livestock farming in general, but also to animal health in particular.According to him, livestock farming in Burkina Faso occupies a very important place and to enable this sector to contribute very effectively to the gross domestic product, animal health issues must be well managed.This is why SNV has committed itself alongside the General Directorate of Veterinary Services through this activity.According to him, good data collection by agents will allow the authority to make efficient decisions for t he benefit of the sector.According to the head of the provincial veterinary services of Cascades, Franck Sanogo, in the past data collection was done only by veterinary posts.But with this training extended to all animal health stakeholders, he thinks he will see an improvement in data collection across the entire chain.Thus, all field agents at the end of these two days of capacity building will be able to collect and report reliable information on the animal health sector, noted Mr. Sanogo while welcoming the initiators of the session.Regarding the MODHEM+/DDC project itself, Kassoum Ouedraogo noted that its main mission is to contribute to improving the productivity, income, resilience and food security of pastoral and agro-pastoral populations in a context of climate change and security crises.It covers four regions of Burkina Faso, namely the Cascades, Centre-West, Centre-South, and South-West regions.According to the coordinator, the project affects approximately 290,000 direct actors and mo re than 800,000 indirect actors spread across twenty 20 municipalities in the intervention regions. It is financed by the Swiss Cooperation Office in Burkina Faso.Source: Burkina Information Agency