The country is facing its worst outbreak of the illness that infects cattle herds. But the first locally-produced vaccine could become a major ally in fighting the disease.<\/p>\n
For South African livestock farmers, the past months were an ever-increasing desperate battle. Currently facing the worst outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in decades, they were struggling to protect their herds from getting infected.<\/p>\n
Foot-and-mouth disease is rarely fatal, but it causes painful blisters in the mouthes and under the hooves of cattle. As a resut, milk production decreases, and cattle have to be quarantined.<\/p>\n
As a result, farmers lose export markets and face trade restrictions, as well as having rising veterinary costs. Altogether, the outbreak has had a highly negative economic impact.<\/p>\n
But the South African government now wants to turn around the situation.<\/p>\n
Until now, the country mostly had to import vaccines against the disease. But for the first time in 21 years, foot-and-mouth disease vaccines are being produced locally again, according to an announcement made on Friday.<\/p>\n
The first batch contains 12 900 multi-strain doses.<\/p>\n
The government also announced a multi-phase plan to regain control over the situation and alleviate the stress on livestock farmers.<\/p>\n
Until the end of January, around two million animals were vaccinated. The locally-produced vaccines are meant to accelerate the vaccination campaign.<\/p>\n
By March, the government wants an additional 5 million vaccine doses to be available.<\/p>\n
Stricter testing and checks until the summer should then reduce the spread of the disease and detect new cases faster.<\/p>\n
Until next January, the ambitious plan should have reduced outbreaks by more than 70% in high-risk areas, as authorities hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The country is facing its worst outbreak of the illness that infects cattle herds. But the first locally-produced vaccine could become a major ally in fighting the disease. For South African livestock farmers, the past months were an ever-increasing desperate battle. Currently facing the worst outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in decades, they were struggling to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"AP","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2854,30],"tags":[122],"class_list":["post-19731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-southern-africa","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19733,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19731\/revisions\/19733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}