In countries with a lack of primary care systems, health workers are of crucial importance to improving the delivery of health and animal health services at community level. But somehow they are rarely evaluated and usually with a top-down approach. This is the case in Cambodia, where thousands of Village Animal Health Workers (VAHWs) have been trained by the government, and where no standardized evaluation tool is available to accurately assess the situation. Based on methodology developed by the French NGO Agronomes et Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (AVSF) in Madagascar for farmers' association evaluation, we developed our own participatory methods to collect information about the VAHW context and build a criteria grid for their evaluation. In this framework, several participatory approaches were used such as problem trees, semi-structured interviews, pair-wise ranking and focus groups. The grid was built with the help of relevant stakeholders involved in the animal health system in Cambodia in order to (i) identify VAHW functions; (ii) set up criteria and associated questionnaires, and (iii) score the grid with all the stakeholders. The tool was divided into five categories of evaluation criteria: sustainability, treatment, production, vaccination and disease reporting. Our approach looked at local indicators of success developed and used by VAHWs themselves, which should lead to better acceptability of evaluation. This method gave priority to dialog aiming to engage decision makers and other stakeholders in a mutual learning process and could be applied in other countries to develop trust between health workers and official service representatives as well as to foster corrective action after evaluation.

L'importance actuelle des maladies animales, leur émergence ou réémergence montrent que la surveillance est indispensable pour que soient définies des mesures de lutte adaptées. Les systèmes de surveillance s'appuient sur différents types d'acteurs organisés en réseau et qui ont pour activités de collecter, transmettre, analyser et diffuser les informations sanitaires. Ces activités peuvent être réparties entre les acteurs du secteur public et ceux du secteur privé. Cependant, la spécification des mandats et attributions de chacun est aujourd'hui essentielle. Ainsi, en Afrique, où la réduction des budgets consacrés aux Services vétérinaires de l'État a suscité depuis quelques années le développement de la médecine vétérinaire privée, les positionnements et rôles des agents de l'État (vétérinaires, techniciens, etc.) par rapport aux acteurs du secteur privé (vétérinaires, éleveurs) demandent à être précisément définis et harmonisés. Diverses expériences dans ce domaine, menées par divers pays d'Afrique subsaharienne, sont ici présentées et commentées.

Distance learning courses in veterinary epidemiology, taught in French and spread over half a year, were organized in 2003 and 2004. They were the subject of surveys concerning need, evaluation, attaining learning objectives, and satisfaction, the results of which will be used to improve the course scheduled to take place in 2005.