It was been just over one month that the news media in Armenia have focused on an outbreak of brucellosis in the livestock of the Tzghuk village in Syunik Marz. (For the uninitiated, Brucellosis is a disease of cattle caused by the infection with the bacterium Brucella abortus. Humans can contract the disease, also called undulant fever, by ingestion of unsterilized milk or meat from infected animals, or close contact with their secretions.

Brucellosis has been recognized in both animals and humans since the 19th century.) The registered cases of the diseases have lead to various explanations and causal factors being propounded by experts, local farms, the local community leaders. Laboratory analyses have been undertaken but their results still need to be studied. Before government bodies present their findings, we traveled to the area to see how veterinary health care is carried out and what is causing the periodic recurrence of livestock infections. Residents of the Akhlatyan village in the region of Sisian still hold out hope that that the government will recompense them for their livestock losses that resulted from an outbreak of swine fever in 2007. “They came, wrote up a legal act and promised to make resources available, but we’ve seen nothing so far,” say local residents. This claim is backed up by Katchik Khachatryan, who heads the agro-environmental department at the Syunik Regional Administration, who notes that cases of infected livestock were reported in other areas of the region as well the same year. “However, they couldn’t be called cases of an epidemic nature because according to the rules only government bodies can hand down such a diagnosis. It couldn’t be classified as an epidemic just because a few score of cattle were found to be infected,” says Mr. Khachatryan. In his opinion, there has been a one-sided evaluation of the reasons for the spread of diseases in livestock. “The government has taken preventative measures in just seven disease cases. In all other cases farmers themselves must see to it that veterinary services are implemented in their farms. Other agricultural specialists, however, don’t agree with this opinion. They note that veterinary services sent in by the government are conducted spontaneously, without prior knowledge and not simultaneously, and thus the spread of the diseases isn’t prevented. Many say that there is no guarantee that even government inoculation programs employ high quality vaccines. “They bring the medicines and carry out the inoculations. Sometimes, you can’t even trust them. For the villager, a livestock animal is a source of livelihood. The pasture, the threat of disease, drought and cold weather, always are objects of attention,” notes a farmer who gave up raising livestock after the 2007 swine fever outbreak. Mr. Edgar Tokhsants, Head of the Syunik Regional Administration’s State Food Safety and Veterinary Inspectorate, notes that the primary reason is that many of the eighty-eight veterinarians working in the 109 communities in the Syunik Marz oftentimes service several villages at once. And even though communities are selected that aren’t located all that far from each other, without a means of transportation adequate service can’t be guaranteed. As Mr. Tokhsants points out, due to deadline pressures and inadequate staff, work is carried out with difficulty. Ever since the January 1, 2007 reorganization of the former Veterinary State Inspectorate that created today’s State Food Safety and Veterinary Inspectorate of the Syunik Regional Administration, the unit has been given a host of other functions to carry out – it oversees the safety and quality of foodstuffs at the more than 500 food production, processing and commercial sites in the region. To carry out all this work the Inspectorate only has a staff of six. “If we take into account that the average distance between communities in Syunik is seventy-five kilometers and that the Inspectorate’s subdivisions in the towns of Goris and Kapan work with just one official vehicle apiece, you get a pretty good picture of the general situation,” states Mr. Tokhsants. The Head of the Inspectorate adds that another serious cause for the work-related deficiencies is the shortage of veterinary professionals. In the last fifteen years new staff members haven’t been hired in the Goris district alone. “It is amazing that there is no veterinary division in the Goris State Agricultural College,” states Mr. Tokhsants, “and this is the case when there are over 100,000 head of animals in the region and farmers are forced to come up with other means regarding the inoculations sponsored by the government.” Contrary to the Inspectorate Head, many local community officials, who have signed a three-way agreement with the RoA Ministry of Agriculture and veterinarians to implement government directed veterinary services in the community, regard the quality of veterinary services as substandard. A portion of the community’s leaders note that the planned for yearly subsidy of 670,000 drams intended to pay for the wages of a veterinarian is often transferred with delays and this sometimes leads to problems with state social service agencies. In the words of Mr. Ashot Mardyan, Head of the Syunik Regional Administration’s Department of Socioeconomic Development, these delays aren’t pervasive in nature and they essentially stem from the fact that at the end of each month community veterinarians must present a work report to the community leadership. This report forms the basis for salary recommendations for each vet that are passed to the Regional Administration for review and processing. Oftentimes, these work reports are handed in late. During our conversation, Mr. Katchik Khachatryan told us that, “The quality level of veterinary service in the communities is to a large part based on the community leader. The more the person pursues matters, the more the frequency of sicknesses decreases.” Mr. Edgar Tokhsants added that in certain communities the community veterinarian is paid additional wages with forecasted budgetary revenues. Otherwise, by paying a wage of 35-40,000 drams per month, one can’t even guarantee efficient work in even just one village. He informed us that in certain villages, for example in Tegh, limited liability companies have been set up that offer private veterinary services. In other communities, the veterinarian receives compensation for veterinary services outside the scope of government sponsored missions. Mr. Tokhsants also told us that with the aim of increasing the effectiveness of veterinary services, twelve veterinary centers have been opened in twelve communities in the Goris district at the initiative of the Yerevan office of the Swiss Strategic Agency. These centers have been outfitted with modern equipment and medicines. To avail themselves of the centers’ services, local community residents, by paying a monthly membership fee of 200 drams for each long-horned animal, can take advantage of the veterinary services provided at no additional cost including preventative care, vaccines, and treatment not included in the list of options available via state services. Mr. Tokhsants states, I don’t want to create the impression that our Inspectorate is skirting responsibility regarding the spread of registered livestock diseases. However, I believe it is appropriate to point out that with only a few staff and veterinarians it is impossible to satisfactorily execute all those measures needed to prevent epidemics from breaking out. Community leaders must be more demanding and diligent when it comes to approving work reports presented to them by the community veterinarian.” In his estimation, even if the government pays for each mandatorily slaughtered animal, but the next day farmers fail to maintain correct hygienic conditions, then new sickness outbreaks are inevitable.