Abstract:
At C.I.F.A. Kausalyaganga, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) approach and methods
have been tried as part of the Institution-Village Linkage Programme (IVLP) to help the aquaculture farmers to do
their own analysis on fish disease epidemiology, surveillance and monitoring, and make their own needs and
priorities known to scientists. It was revealed that PRA satisfies the acute decision making needs of fish disease
epidemiology, surveillance and monitoring. Participatory methods of "visualization", such as mapping,
modelling, scoring matrices, linkages and causal diagramming are powerful, popular, valid and reliable when well
facilitated and performed. PRA is a low cost diagnostic method, which can be very well applied to fish health
surveillance and monitoring.
