A Questionnaire Survey of Perceptions and Preventive Measures Related to Animal Health amongst Cattle Owners of Rural Communities in Kwazulu-natal, South Africa

a INTRODUCTION The former homelands of South Africa are generally regarded as resource-poor areas with poor infrastructure, a high unemployment rate and with subsistence farming dominating other agricultural activities. Production indicators, such as herd mortality and calving rate are generally far below those of commercial farmers 12. Before help can be implemented in an effective manner, areas where improvement is needed must be identified. From a veterinary point of view, this involves not only estimating the prevalence of infectious diseases, but also understanding the related perceptions, culture and needs of the communities, which has been proven very important for any successful disease control 13. With the change of the government in 1994, rural


INTRODUCTION
The former homelands of South Africa are generally regarded as resource-poor areas with poor infrastructure, a high unemployment rate and with subsistence fanning dominating other agricultural activities.Production indicators, such as herd mortaLity and calving rate are generally far below those of commercial farmers ll .Before help can be implemented in an effective manner, areas where improvement is needed must be identified.From a veterinary pOint of view, this involves not only estimating the prevalence of infectious d iseases, but also understanding the re lated perceptions, culture and needs of the communities, which has been proven very important for any successful disease control' 3.With the change of the government in 1994, rural communities h<1ve received more attention and several studies investigated the needs of livestock owners" as well as production parameters rl and parasite cOlllroI 8 ,o." in various areas of South Africa.At the same time changes are occurring in the Provincial Veterinary Services (PVS).ln the past PVS had built a large number of diptanks in the rural areas and impleme n ted a large-sca le dipping systems for the control of tick borne diseases.Owners we.re encouraged to dip their ca ttle at regu lar intervals.[n the future cattle owners may be encouraged to take on more responsibi lity in the maintenance of the dipping process.
The objecth'e of this survey was to improve the understanding of the perceptions local catlleowners have towards • veterinary services; • the stock health and management problems they experience; • measures in use for the prevention of disease.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The survey population comprised a convenience sample of cattle owners of the rural areas of KwaZulu -Natal.tn total 315 livestock owners were interviewed Thirty-two Animal Health Technicians (AH"f) employed by the Provincial Vetelinary Scrvices, were given a day of training before the survey and were instructed to conduct the interviews pe rsonally in Zulu during the routine dip ping procedure.Answers weTe recorded on a data capture sheet and entered into and analysed with the software prograt"!1 Epi Info (version 3.3.2,CDC Atlanta).The Chi square test was used 10 test for significant associations.Since not all respondents answered all questions or owned the relevant species, the denominator for proportions was chosen to be the number of answersillld the numberofrclevant owners, respectively.The survey was carried out in 9 surveillance zones and although the survey was analysed using all the answers, ana lYSis at zone level was also carried out to reflect local differences and is reported as the range in brackets after the overall result if relevant regiona l differences occurred.The number of

RESULTS
The collected data on general demographies of livestock owners and their stock are given in Table 2.
The Animal Health Technician (Al IT) was found to be the most freque nt source of advice for 71.6 % (II = 296, range 16.6-9U %) of respondents.A local farmer's cooperative that is a retai l outlet fo r remed ies commonly required by farmers, also fu lfilled a less important advisory role (22.3 %), albeit large regional di fferen ces occurred (range 0-66.7 %).Genera lly, private veterinarians do not playa pivotal role in health advice, being contacted by only 19.9 % (range 0-50 %) of the owners (II = 2%).
The great majority of interviewees (82.1 %) knew w hat Provincial Veterinary Services are and ju st as many (81.1 %) said they know what Provincial Ve terinary Services do (/I = 296).Almost all (90.5 %, /I = 296) of (he respondents knew their Animal Health Technician.Fewer people appeared to be informed of how Provincial Veterinary Services are organised (47.3 %, /I = 296).Ninety per cen t had a good opinion of veterinary services while2.4% sa id their opinion of PVS was bad .Most people agreed with Provincial Vete ri nary Services bleeding thei r animals for surveillance purposes (77.4 %, /I = 2%).
Most of these owners (5 1.4%) d id no t agree wi th the procedure because they did not believe it could lead to improved health of their animals, a smaller proportion (ll.-l '!o) objected because they were not given advance warning.
Opinions differed grea tl y on which type of medium for extension services Vaccination of stock appea rs to be common practice (84.8 %, II = 290), and varied only sl ightly throughout the districts (range 71.4--94.4%).Blackquarter (77.6 %) and an thrax (47.9 %) were the vaccine most freque n tly used by cattle owners (Il = 290).
Deworming was carried out by 79.S % (/1 = 315) of which 63.1 % used only commercial remedies, 10.7 % used only trad itional remedies and 6 % used both.A significant association occurred between cattle owners deworming their animals and reporting worms as a problem in their stock in this interview (P < 0.(05).

DISCUSSION
The results of this survey may have been influenced by 5e\'era l sources of bias such as the convenience selection of interviewees d uring the dipping proce• dure, as th is approach limited the response group to ca ttle owners who cooperate with Provincial Veterinary Services and practise dipping.Collecting the information in the above manner constituted a practical and cost•efficient way of gathering important information.
Considering the demographics, parallels to other studies conducted in the rural context are present.For example the average numberof12cilttleowned in this study does not differ much from that found by Dreyer eJ al. ' and illso the species owned and their rela ti ve frequency simu• lates findings from other South African rural areasl.l'.Deworming appears to be a frequent practice, but efficacy may be questionable, as owners deworming their animals were also significantly (P < 0.05) more likely to state that worms were a health problem in their cattle.This fact and that long intervals between worm treatments occurred, support the likeli• hood of inefficacy of internal pilrasite trea tment, an effect that was also observed by Getchel et al! , who also found that the medication is o ft en severely underdosed .To address this, deworming practices and treatments applied should be further investigated and advice on appropriate treatment, as welt as management practices should be integrated in the prOgrilmme of farmer's days and other information pathways.
Many owners used additional external parasite control stich as the use of pourons.The application of such nleasures could indicate that tick control by means of dipping is considered not suffi ciently effe<:tive.It was observed during another study in this area that owners preferred to have their cattle relatively free of ticks/ a finding that was repeated in a study in a different rural area, where owners went to great lengths to render their cattle completely t i ck-free '~.This practice is likely to have contributed to an end emic instability for babesiosis in KwaZulu-Natal that was observed in the serological su rvey of which this study was a part 5 .Ticks were also mentioned as the most important health problem in most of the districts, renecting the findings of Dreyer ct a/.l • It rewains unclear, howeve r, whether the health problem refers to the ticks thewselves, resulting abscesses or associated d iseases.
The results of another study found the killing of ticks to be Ihe most important reason for tick control followed by disease control and damage to teats, which gives the impression that the ticks themselves might be considered the problem".The high proportion of owners dipping their cattle, although corresponding with findings of another study,q should be interpreted with care, due to the above mentioned bias of selecting interviewees during the dippi ng procedure, which occurred in both studies.
Similar to the findings of another study investigating the use of hf'rbal remedies by Masika et a/.As in other rural areas', diseases, together with lack of knowledge are considered to be an important management problem .
The answers to the qUl'stion on nwnagement problems though were somewhat pre•determined through the useof multiple choice questions.
Preferences for the channels of communication of ex tension measures varied among the districts in this survey, but this variabili ty might have been caused by the fact that owners preferred the types of extension work they were already exposed to and which were not uniform throughout the province.Anima l health technicians were shown in this survey to play an important role in advising local farmersthe implied trust is very important in the implementation of future extension services.
Si nce any animal health initiative is known tobe effective only if it issupportcd and understood by the local farmers and reflects their needs' ~, further reseilrch on where knowledge g<ipS exist and what additional knowledge wouJd be perceived as beneficial, is essen tial before more specific programmes for extension work can be designed.
Participatory workshops and focus groups have been found very useful in this context7.1land could be initiated by taking the results of this survey baek into the comwunity for discussion.
The knowledge accuwulated through such an approach, could then be used to further train Aniwal Health Technicians and communi ty based animal health workers, in better ways to advise cilttle owners on management and animal health issues.Such extension work is very important in controlling diseases in such commu n ities and forms an important component of a holistic approach to disease management that includes other discip lines such as agriculture and sociol-ogy7.lJ.require effe<:tive.Most frequently mentioned were farmer's days 46.7 % (range 11.1-S0 %, 11 = 315).Radio was also thought 10 be very useful by 35.6 % (range 9.5-88.9%, 11 = 315 ).Around a third (27.9 %) of interviewees considered clinics 10 be a valuable extension (range 0-90.9 %, II -315 ).Demonstrations and pamphlets were only regarded as useful by 19.4 % (range O--S4.S %) and 16.2 % (rilngeO-50 %) of t he owners, respe<:tiveiy (11 = 315).

Table 1 :
Number and proportion of interviews in the districts included in the 2002103 survey in KwaZutu-Natal.

Table 2 :
General demographics and livestock owners hip information collected in the 2002103 survey in KwaZulu-Natal.
observations respondents that answered the respe<:tive question is reported as II.

Table 3 :
Additional means of controlling external parasites used in the 2002103 survey in KwaZulu-Natal.

Table 4 :
Health problems In cattle noted by owners in the 2002/03 survey in KZN.

Table 4 .
Ticks and worms were the most frequently mentioned problems, followed by diarrhoea.
w , traditional medicines appear to play an important role in the trea tment of animals in this con text.Knowledge of herbal medicine values further exploration, as previous research has shown that many plants in use in South Africa do show marked pharmaco-activity'.Noassociation was found between the use of traditional medicine and believing in witchcraft, which may indicate that use of traditional remedies and ITadi tional beliefs are not necessarily linked.