By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Department of Agriculture (DOA) Minister John Steenhuisen has expressed satisfaction with the ongoing national mass vaccination rollout campaign against Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD).
Steenhuisen held a media briefing on Monday, 1 June, at the Imbizo Hall at parliament in Cape Town.
He outlined the country’s response to the outbreak and its vaccination programme efforts to eliminate infections amongst livestock in the country.
Steenhuisen said nearly 4.4 million animals had already been vaccinated by 28 May as government intensifies efforts to contain the disease and protect the livestock sector.
“This is the largest vaccine acquisition programme ever undertaken by the South African state,” he said.
He added that the department aims to reach 80% of the national herd by year-end through a risk-based rollout supported by provincial teams and private sector partners.
According to Steenhuisen, last week, a total of 3.5 million Biogenesis Bargo vaccine doses arrived in South Africa, to strengthen the country’s ability to expand vaccination efforts across affected and at-risk areas.
He also confirmed that the first shipment of four million doses of the Dollvet vaccine is expected to arrive this month after the vaccine received approval from the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA). In total, 14 million Dollvet doses have been approved for import.
“This vaccine pipeline will ensure that we are able to deliver the required booster vaccinations,” he said.
“To date, the government has already spent R494 million on vaccine procurement and deployment. We have carried the financial burden of this intervention because the cost of inaction would have been far greater.”
KwaZulu-Natal remains the epicentre of the vaccination campaign, with more than 1.1 million animals vaccinated. Other provinces have also recorded significant progress, including the Eastern Cape with more than 720,000 vaccinations and the Free State with over 600,000.
The minister reiterated that the department is receiving assistance from the private sector in deploying vaccines and said it was never the department’s intention to solely administer the FMD vaccines.
He was responding to a recent Gauteng High Court ruling, which permits livestock farmers, feedlots, and dairy operations to administer FMD vaccines independently.
“The Ministerial Implementation Committee, made up exclusively of the private sector, has been intimately involved in helping develop things like Section 10 and the upcoming Section 9 that we will be publishing. We have provided millions of vaccines to the private sector to distribute to their members, and I’ve always been very grateful to organisations like the Milk Producers Organisation, who procured cold-chain vehicles to help distribute these vaccines to their members, “he said.
Steenhuisen also welcomed a decision by Southern African Development Community (SADC) ministers meeting in Zimbabwe to prioritise the development of a regional coordination framework for FMD control.