Mozambique’s government will import over a million vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease to respond to outbreaks confirmed in some districts in the centre of the country, an official source announced on Monday.
“We are procuring one million vaccines from Botswana in response to the outbreak of the disease, which so far remains confined to some districts in Tete province [central Mozambique]. We hope that they will arrive in a few days,” explained the national director for livestock development, Américo da Conceição, cited by the daily newspaper Notícias.
The authorities plan to administer the vaccines to around 500,000 cattle in risk areas, at a time when southern African countries are facing an outbreak of the “O strain” of foot-and-mouth disease, said Conceição.
The operation is budgeted at US$5 million (€4.9 million) from the state budget and comes at a time when Mozambique’s neighbours are feeling the impact of the outbreak, such as South Africa, which recently decided to ban animal movements across the country for 21 days.
Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious disease for ruminants and pigs, caused by seven serotypes of the virus of the genus “Aphtovirus”.
The fever affects animal production, but has no public health repercussions and is endemic in several parts of the world, notably in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Central and South America.
