Five million animals to get disease jabs

Kareem Shaheen

• Last Updated: October 19. 2009 11:58PM UAE / October 19. 2009 7:58PM GMT

ABU DHABI // Five million animals in the emirate will be immunised against dangerous infectious diseases by the middle of next year, according to officials.

The campaign, which started yesterday with 37,850 shots given to camels, cattle, sheep and goats in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al Gharbia, will run until May.

It aims to reduce both diseases that affect livestock, such as foot-and-mouth disease, and those that might spread to humans, such as tuberculosis and pasteurellosis.
New laws are also being planned that would force farmers to notify authorities of any cases of seven infectious diseases, with fines if they fail to do so.

While the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority, which is running the vaccination programme, said there had not been any recent reported cases of foot-and-mouth in the UAE – the last widely reported outbreak was in 2001 – it said the measures were intended to be largely a pre-emptive strike.

The initial phase will see roughly half of the emirate’s livestock immunised against seven diseases, with the aim of reaching all of them within two to three years.

The strategy is a major overhaul of veterinary care for livestock. The food authority took control of the veterinary department from the Department of Municipalities and Agriculture (DMA) earlier this year. Previously, the authority’s focus was on setting food safety standards and inspecting food establishments.

Now, according to Mohammed al Reyaysa, the food authority’s spokesman, “the role of the authority has expanded to include everything from the farm to the plate”.

Under the DMA, only five per cent of livestock was vaccinated against the seven diseases. “It wasn’t a big plan,” said one vet, who was immunising animals at a private farm 70km outside the capital. “We didn’t consider it appropriate.”

Mr al Reyaysa added: “We’re moving from waiting for diseases, to immunising beforehand to avert any disasters.”

The first part of the project will immunise livestock against enterotoxaemia, a fatal bacterial infection that causes stomach poisoning in animals, and pasteurellosis, a common disease that reduces animal immunity and causes lung infections and blood poisoning in sheep and goats. The latter can be passed to humans.

The vaccinations have been scheduled to coincide with the times when each disease is likely to spread, with shots against tubercolosis and pleuritis being given next month, followed by foot-and-mouth in December.

Animals will receive jabs against small ruminant plague in January, and sheep and goat pox in February. Repeat shots will be given between March and May.

Mobile veterinary clinics are patrolling the emirate’s farms, 11,000 of which, containing 350,000 animals, are in and around the capital. The clinics are equipped with X-ray machines, ultrasound, first aid, medicine, surgical equipment and vaccines.

The authority also plans to set up a database to track reports of infections, in order to contain potential outbreaks more effectively.

In addition, a new unit will co-ordinate the response to any outbreak of diseases that can be spread between humans and animals.

The immunisation drive will be free to small farms, although larger commercial ones will have to pay. While not giving specifics, an food authority vet said the cost would be only a few dirhams per injections.

Food authority officials would not say how many animals were affected by the seven diseases, saying that they differed according to the season and farm conditions.

Moreover, they said, some farmers were currently failing to notify the authorities of disease outbreaks in their farms, which made determining the scale of the problem more difficult.

Nevertheless, the number of fatal cases in animals was “substantial”, according to one consultant.

Some farmers were wary of allowing their animals to be vaccinated because they worried about potential side-effects, said the vet. “We have to ... convince the farmers that this is for their benefit and for the benefit of the environment. Our goal is to reduce the number of deaths.”

Farmers who do not report outbreaks among their livestock would face punitive measures in the future, the vet said. “There will be instructions and laws that require farmers to tell us about these diseases and give up the infected animals.”

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