Ongwediva
The director of veterinary services, Milton Maseke, said plans to declare the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the Northern Communal Areas (NCA) over, are going ahead and a formal announcement is expected soon – possibly by next week Friday..
Maseke said control measures in Zambezi Region would continue as usual. He said the Terrestrial Code of the World Health Organisation allows for a period of about six months after the last case was detected before an outbreak can be declared over. In the case of the Northern Communal Areas, the last case was detected on July 22 in Etayi Constituency in the Omusati Region.
They have to count six months from July 22, 2015 before they can declare the FMD outbreak over, he explained.
Although he could not confirm when the most recent case in of FMD was detected in the Zambezi Region – which is treated separately from the NCA – but said measures to prevent the further spread of FMD would continue until no case is detected.
Two million doses of vaccine have been used to vaccinate 1.2 million animals since the FMD outbreak.
The two million doses were administered to cattle in Namibia, including those that graze beyond the border with Angola. Maseke was content with the farmers’ cooperation since the start of the FMD early last year.
“I only have words of praise for our farmers, because they understood the importance of the vaccination,” he said.
He said the first round of the vaccination programme received quite a huge turnout compared to the second one: “Round one was really good, we could not keep up, but with the drought experienced the second round was a bit problematic, because the animals were too weak to stand and walk. But the farmers were really eager.”
Meat vendors, who spoke to New Era recently regarding how they viewed the decision to declare the FMD outbreak over soon, expressed satisfaction, saying it would come as a great relief to their struggling farming businesses.