The Strengthening Veterinary Services in Developing Countries (SVSDC) Project is a 4-year project funded by the European Union, through the European Parliament and the European Commission.

It specifically addresses the compliance of African Veterinary Services with the standards on the quality of Veterinary Services of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

These international standards and guidelines constitute the basis for independent external country evaluations of the quality of Veterinary Services and Animal Health Systems and have been democratically adopted by all OIE Members. A specific methodology has been developed and published as the “OIE Tool for the Evaluation of Performance of Veterinary Services” (the OIE PVS Tool) and is key to this Project as it enables national Veterinary Services to establish their current level of performance, identify gaps and weaknesses in their compliance with the international standards of the OIE, and establish priorities.

The Project consists of two components. The first component focuses on strengthening national Veterinary Services in Africa (result areas 1 – 3), and the second component is centred on rabies control and elimination in Kenya and northern Africa result areas 4 – 5). Overall there are 5 result areas :

• enhance the legislative framework of African veterinary services
• gradually bring national veterinary services up to the standards of the OIE through the implementation of OIE PVS Pathway missions and of their recommendations.
• develop a PVS-based tool to enable Regional Economic Communities (REC) to exploit data from national PVS Pathway missions conducted in their Member States to develop e.g. regional investment plans
• at the national level, support the implementation of the national Strategic Plan to eliminate human rabies in Kenya, in collaboration with relevant partners.
• at the regional level, set up an OIE Regional Vaccine Bank for canine rabies in Africa and provide technical expertise for the development and implementation of regional strategies (in North Africa).

The project started in December 2015 and ends in December 2019. The total budget for the project amounts to EUR 3.5 million.