Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support Project says it is embarking on building and equipping 20 model veterinary hospitals across geopolitical zones to strengthen the delivery of quality animal healthcare nationwide.

The national project coordinator L-PRES, Sanusi Abubakar, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja.

Mr Abubakar revealed that the 20 states for the model veterinary hospitals include Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, Borno, Plateau, Niger, Kwara, Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Edo, Enugu, Ebonyi, Ondo, Ekiti and Oyo.

He disclosed that seven out of the number were already at various stages of completion. According to him, these are the ones in Sokoto, Niger, Enugu, Ondo, Borno, Adamawa and Edo States.

“By estimation, the animal health infrastructure will serve more than 450,000 value clusters in its first and second year of full operations,” Mr Abubakar said.

The L-PRES national project coordinator added that the infrastructure would be linked with the private sector in a public-private partnership arrangement to ensure sustainability.

Mr Abubakar  noted that more than 80 per cent of registered veterinarians were in the private sector, adding that bringing them on board would ensure full utilisation of the facilities.

He said the arrangement would further ensure the mentoring and training of younger professionals who would be handed the mantle of leadership as soon as possible.

“L-PRES is a $500 million World Bank project that has been on in about 20 states across Nigeria,” Mr Abubakar explained. “The project objective is to improve productivity, commercialisation and resilience of livestock value chains generally. Most of the activities that are going on at the state level deal with livestock value chain enhancement.

Mr Abubakar added that L-PRES’s framework was to ensure all its targeted 450,000 livestock value chain clusters are reached with veterinary care or services.

(NAN)