This is the first in Afrivet’s series of primary animal healthcare booklets, developed to help the veterinarian, livestock owner and livestock handler to understand the methodology used when providing primary animal healthcare. The booklet is ideally suited as training material that can be used for training livestock handlers in early disease identification and treatment. In this module we use the example of pneumonia to describe the our approach to primary animal healthcare.

What is primary animal healthcare?

It is the healthcare provided by the livestock handler who looks after the animals on a daily basis. The trained livestock handler forms the first line of defence against animal diseases that can cause production loss or death. Diseases do not just randomly happen, but rather follow a specific development process. A disease is triggered by an interaction between the disease-causing factor, the environment and the animal. The most important job of the livestock handler is to observe the first sign of disease before it causes production loss or death.