Overview
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Animal Health (AHIL) is a five-year (2020 to 2025) cooperative agreement funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The project is implemented by Washington State University in collaboration with the University of Nairobi and the International Livestock Research Institute aimed at improving human nutrition, economic welfare, and resilience by removing constraints to cattle health and production in Kenya and the East Africa region.
Specifically, AHIL will develop and improve diagnostic products and vaccines for East Coast fever (ECF), integrate socioeconomics to improve adoption of animal health innovations and interventions, quantify their direct and indirect effects on human nutrition and well-being, set up and operationalize a molecular and diagnostic lab for animal health research at the University of Nairobi Veterinary School, and develop the next generation of animal health researchers in the region.
Sponser
USAID
Principal Investigator
Abstract
The goal of the project is to enhance livestock health and productivity, household incomes, food security and human nutrition through East Coast fever control in Kenya.
The Feed the Future Animal Health Innovation Lab will develop local capacity in Kenya to carry out laboratory-based animal health research to improve East Coast fever vaccines and diagnostics and conduct social and economic evaluations of the effects of animal health interventions on human nutrition and wellbeing.
The project also leverages on the Transformation of Animal Health Services and Solutions in Low- and middle-income countries (TAHSSL) platform, an existing partnership of the International Livestock Research Institute, ClinGlobal and GALVmed, to conduct research and clinical studies to meet private-sector standards to facilitate product and market development.
Objectives
- Improve the infection-and-treatment method of East Coast fever vaccination
- Improve East Coast fever diagnostic tools
- Improve the sub-unit vaccines, anti-sporozoite antibody-mediated vaccine solutions
- Integrate economics, gender and youth to quantify direct and indirect effects of East Coast fever vaccine innovations and interventions on human nutrition and wellbeing
- Assess maternal and child nutritional status in livestock-keeping households
- Build human and institutional capacity for animal health research
Expected outcomes
- Improved East Coast fever vaccines and diagnostics that are available, accessible and routinely used
- Internationally competitive research hub for animal health with extramural funding
- High-quality policy evidence to improve animal health and production
- High-quality scientific research produced by the PhD research fellows
- Animal health research support structures and laboratory infrastructure
- Integration of ethics, biosafety, biocontainment, Good Clinical Practices, Good Manufacturing Practices and gender modules into routine research training
- Enhanced engagement between participating animal health researchers and policymakers