Livestock farmers and veterinarians are concerned about the unavailability of vaccine for Rift Valley Fever (RVF), following three outbreaks of the disease in South Africa’s northern provinces.
“We’ve had three outbreaks in recent weeks, the first of which was at a buffalo project in Mpumalanga where some of the buffalo cows aborted and a calf died. A nother outbreak was at the buffalo project in the Hoedspruit area in Limpopo and now we’ve had an outbreak on a dairy farm in Bela-Bela,” said Lephalale (Ellisras) state veterinarian Dr Lolly Fourie. “Our main concern is that Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) doesn’t have vaccine in stock,” he adds.
One of the symptoms of this disease is that it causes abortions in pregnant animals. The prevent this, the animals need to be injected with an inactive strain of the vaccine. Sesie Mabaso of OBP has confirmed that the organisation doesn’t have the inactive strain in stock and said it would only become available in a month’s time. She noted that the active strain is currently available, but can’t be used on animals that are pregnant. This is terrible news for cattle farmers as the majority of their cows are pregnant at this time of the year.
Contagious disease
According to Dr Fourie, the disease is spread among animals by mosquitoes. “We can only hope the recent cold spells we’ve experienced in many parts of the country will curb the numbers of mosquitos.” he said. RVF can be spread from animals to humans through physical contact. Dr Fourie has implored farmers to be extremely careful when handling aborted foetuses or dead animals, as they may be infected with the disease. – Jasper Raats
