Background: Community animal health services has been promoted by Government and Non-Government Organisations for almost 20 years in developing countries. It assumes that basic preventive and curative care for animals delivered by community animal health workers will improve the health and wealth of poor communities in developing countries. Donors and implementers are concerned about measuring impact of these programmes, but no-one has yet systematically reviewed information currently available.

Objective: To assess the impact of community animal health services on the health of the animals and on the benefit to the communities that own them. Types of study: all studies that measure some outcome (case study, before and after, and controlled trials)

Intervention: basic preventive and curative animal health services provided by a paravet (or community animal health worker) who is not salaried by the state.

Outcomes: wealth of livestock keeper households, livestock productivity, livestock mortality, livestock fertility, and livestock morbidity.

Comment: This is the first attempt we know about to use the systematic review methods of the Cochrane Collaboration in animal health care. We hope we will be able to take this work forward in other areas of animal care, and welcome discussion about this.