Role of Women in Small Ruminant Disease Control within Kenema District, Eastern Sierra Leone

The rearing of ruminants play an important role in the provision of protein needs in the daily diet of rural farmers and provides financial support for many rural women in Sierra Leone. The main aim of this study was to find out the role played by women in the control and prevention of diseases among small ruminants in the Kenema District and to identify the types of small ruminants reared in the district by women, to ascertain the number of females that shepherd these small ruminants. Multistage sampling technique was used to select 8 chiefdoms from Kenema District and 100 respondents were randomly selected from each of the chiefdoms. Both primary and secondary sources of data were used. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the female farmers who served as respondents for this study. In addition to this, information was obtained from other small ruminant farmers and expert opinion was sort in order to enrich this study. Major findings reveal that most (60%) of the women in the study area reared goats and 48.15 percent of the small ruminants were owned by only women. Majority (78.22%) of the women contacted veterinary officers to help in diseases control in small ruminants and most (62.38%) of the women had a herd size of 1 to 10. Majority of the women (83.17%) in the study area had spent between 1 to 5 years in raising small ruminants and 37.62 percent of the small ruminants were killed by diseases. Only 5.9 percent of the women reported that they treat the small ruminants themselves. According to the study, worm was a major threat that affected small ruminants as it was reported by more than one-tenth (13.9 %) of the respondents.