FMD official replies to Mmegi story

| Tuesday June 17, 2008 00:00

The outbreak of FMD is in Ngamiland or zone 2 or Maun district and not Okavango.

Government has not 'suspended any FMD activity' in Ngamiland. What transpires is that government has a comprehensive FMD control program that entails several activities such as vaccination, disease surveillance, cattle culling, etc covering all susciptible animal species at specific times.

So the program is not suspended but it is completed or finished.

From 10th April to 15 May 08 -  it was mass vaccination in cattle;
18th May to 30th May 08 - it was follow-up vaccinations of cattle not covered during mass vaccination;

From 2nd June to 9th June 08, the activity was the culling of cattle still not vaccinated. 

Even during this activity animals presented for vaccination were vaccinated and not killed. We move on with the next activity on the program which is looking for the disease (surveillance) in sheep, goats and pigs. The activity commences from 13th to 30 June 08 and during this activity we are particularly careful not to handle these species, which we believe have no disease together with cattle, which have the disease, to avoid causing cross-contamination. 

Nevertheless we continue to keep a close eye on cattle because they still have the disease.

After this exercise the next one will be revaccination of cattle in July 2008. And the program goes on and on as we shall keep updating the nation. 

There is nothing to 'suspend' in the midst of a fuming outbreak of FMD!

Dr Moetapele Letshwenyo
FMD Control, Ministry of Agriculture

EDITOR'S NOTE: We acknowledge our reference to Okavango rather than Ngami as misleading. We recognize that the two are not interchangeable and any use of the two as so is misleading. We retract that. The use of the word 'suspended' is not inappropriate. We maintain that one has to read the story in its entirety to understand the context in which the word 'suspended' is used. It would be disengenous to argue that read with the whole story the word 'suspend' is inappropriate and misleading.