Lucas Barasa
Nairobi, Kenya
THE AFRICAN UNION HAS launched a programme to fight rinderpest in three Eastern Africa countries.
The European Union has released 1.8 million euros for the first phase of the programme, which runs to October this year. The disease is spread across the Somali ecosystem that covers parts of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
Rinderpest, which kills both livestock and wildlife, has ravaged Africa since early last century.
The AU Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (IBAR) director Modibo Traore said in Nairobi during the launch of the Somali Ecosystem Rinderpest Eradication Co-ordination Unit (Serecu) recently that Kenya and Ethiopia had only joined the World Animal Health Organisation on zonal basis while Somalia had not joined at all due to uncertainty of the presence of the disease.
“Being so close to global eradication of rinderpest, it is of regional and international interest to eradicate the disease once and for all from Africa,” Dr Traore said.
The AU suspects there is a mild presence of rinderpest in the three countries and will report its findings to the World Animal Health Organisation.
“We suspect it is there and we will try to establish its absence or presence. By 2004, due to uncertainty, rinderpest was presumably confined to only the Somali ecosystem,” another AU/IBAR official, Dr Dickens Chibeu, said.
He added, “We have been looking for the disease, but we have not been seeing it. We are going to hunt for it and verify if it is there or not.”
The Somali ecosystem comprises the region of Kenya and Ethiopia occupied by the Somali community, southern Somalia and the adjacent regions where the Somalis migrate with their livestock.
Dr Chibeu said the AU will define free surveillance and endemic zones after the campaign and also develop and pursue alternative options to facilitate trade. It will also strengthen animal health delivery system.
Rinderpest is highly contagious and moves from animal to animal with its outbreak killing millions.
The AU has managed to eradicate the disease in 30 African countries since the 1960s. Through the efforts of the AU’s predecessor – the Organisation of African Unity – and with the support of donors, including the Food Agriculture Organisation and the EU, rinderpest was brought under control in sub-Saharan Africa first in the 1970s.
Currently, the Pan African Programme for the Control of Epizootics (PACE) aims to eradicate rinderpest and control of other epizootics.
THE AJORITY OF countries in sub-Saharan Africa have verified the absence of rinderpest and joined the World Animal Health Organisation pathway for the eradication of the disease.
Dr Chibeu said, “The three East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have established liaison offices to fight the disease and signed an operational memorandum of understanding with the AU’s animal resources bureau.”
Some 7.5 million heads of cattle are targeted in the eradication campaign.
Dr Chibeu said it had been difficult to eradicate the pest in the region due to lack of a government in Somalia, but the end of 14-year war in the country had given the AU new hope. Other hurdles included lack of a coherent and co-ordinated approach, an international agency with a mandate to fight the pest and the fact that Somali borders are porous.
Source: The East African, April 12, 2006
