A new vaccine, designed to protect East African cattle against all major strains of foot and mouth disease, is offering hope to small-scale farmers battling the highly contagious disease. Foot and mouth disease, or FMD, reduces milk production by up to 80 per cent in affected dairy cattle, costing African producers an estimated US$2.3 billion each year.
The vaccine was developed as part of the AgResults Vaccine Challenge Project, an eight-year, US$17.34 million “pay-for-results” prize competition, organized by the livestock charity GALVmed. It is hoped the treatment will prevent new outbreaks of the disease, improving dairy productivity and access to FMD-free global markets.
According to Nina Henning, project manager team lead at GALVmed, vaccination is currently carried out largely in response to an emergency, rather than to prevent an outbreak, meaning only around five per cent of cattle in Africa have been vaccinated. “Moving away from reactive vaccination in the case of an outbreak to prophylactic use before an outbreak is a huge step forward for preventative vaccination,” she tells SciDev.Net.
The quadrivalent vaccine, manufactured by Biopharma – a vaccine manufacturer company based in Morocco – has been tailored to protect against the four types of FMD virus – O, A, SAT1, and SAT2 – that are known to be circulating in Eastern Africa. It the first quadrivalent vaccine against FMD to be registered in the region. It has been developed for use in all cattle .
