Helping the Afghan people through their livestock fghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 36% of the population below the poverty line. Of the 35.5 million Afghans, about 24 million are living in the countryside, being more or less dependent on agriculture and livestock.
Address:
Street # 5 of Syloo, House # 152-153, District 3, Kabul, Afghanistan
Initially, DCA provided general humanitarian aid to the Afghan people. But from the late 1980s onwards, the focus changed to veterinary activities as a way to help the Afghan population. In 1988, DCA established her first veterinary training centre in Peshawar, Pakistan. Afghanistan itself was still too dangerous for foreign aid organisations to intervene. In Peshawar, DCA trained Afghans that were recruited from target provinces in Afghanistan as paraveterinarians (paravets). After a veterinary training of 5 months, these paravets returned to Afghanistan and established small veterinary field units in their home villages. In 1994, the change of focus of DCA towards veterinary relief activities was formalised by the official foundation of DCA-VET (Dutch Committee for Afghanistan – Veterinary Programmes), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that focuses explicitly on veterinary programs. The same year, the first DCAVET veterinary training centre in Afghanistan was opened in Herat.
