Queried cattle vaccine genuine, says UK lab

A cattle vaccine that is at the centre of a big fallout between the government and supplier MTK Uganda Ltd. Courtesy photo

What you need to know:

  • If the cold chain breaks the drug may be ineffective. The third issue is whether the animals that were vaccinated had been exposed to chemicals and antibiotics.” This can make the vaccine ineffective. And the other issue is if the animals were not already incubating foot and mouth disease. If they were, then the vaccine would not be effective.”

A cattle vaccine that is at the centre of a big fallout between the government and supplier MTK Uganda Ltd is not fake as earlier said, results from a laboratory in the United Kingdom (UK) have showed.

The vaccine was imported from Nairobi, Kenya by MTK under an order by the ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF).

Documents Saturday Monitor has seen show that the 190,000 doses of the foot and mouth disease vaccine were received and verified by Mr Peter Nuwamanya on behalf of the National Drug Authority (NDA) and eventually taken to the ministry of Agriculture’s stores in Wandegeya.

Weeks later, the ministry of Agriculture wrote to the supplier, MTK, saying that the vaccine they had supplied was fake. Sources say that the President was informed that a fake vaccine for foot and mouth disease had been imported into the country, to which he responded by assigning Lt Col Judith Nakalema, the head of the State House Anti-Corruption Unit, to investigate.

Col Nakalema, sources say, enlisted the support of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the police, and commenced an investigation that spread to, among places, Nairobi where the vaccine originated from.

Vaccine found genuine
Samples of the contested vaccine were also sent to a laboratory at the Pirbright Institute in the UK for testing.

Pirbright is a research institute in Surrey, England, dedicated to the study of infectious diseases of farm animals, information on its website shows.
Dr Anna Rose Ademun Okurut, the commissioner for Animal health at the ministry of Agriculture, dispatched the samples to the Pirbright Institute for testing. The results report, dated August 7, was accordingly addressed to her.

The report from Pirbright Institute reads: “One of the supplied samples was tested for the presence of foot and mouth disease virus, with positive results.”
It was signed by Dr Donald King, head of Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratories of the Pirbright Institute.

But long after the Pirbright Institute released the report to the government officials and investigators, press reports regarding the “fake drug” continued as a debilitating war between MTK and some government officials seemed to play out in the background.

Background
The documents we have seen show that in September 2018, the ministry of Agriculture contracted MTK to supply 500,000 doses of foot and mouth disease vaccine to vaccinate cattle that were at risk in different parts of the country.

MTK eventually supplied 190,000 dozes of the 500,000 ordered, getting paid Shs1.165b for the vaccines supplied.

Why would some farmers complain that it did not work?
Dr Edward Okori, a veterinary doctor who has worked with the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) as the national livestock programme officer for Uganda, told Saturday Monitor that if the vaccine was found genuine by the Firbright Institute, which he described as “a high class reference lab”, other factors could make a potent vaccine ineffective.

Dr Okori said: “There are about seven serotypes of foot and mouth disease. For the vaccine to be effective, you have to be sure that you are vaccinating against the right serotype. I don’t know whether they first tested for the serotype before placing the order for the vaccine. The second issue is that once the vaccine is delivered, it has to be maintained in a cold chain until it gets into the tissue of the animal.

If the cold chain breaks the drug may be ineffective. The third issue is whether the animals that were vaccinated had been exposed to chemicals and antibiotics.” This can make the vaccine ineffective. And the other issue is if the animals were not already incubating foot and mouth disease. If they were, then the vaccine would not be effective.”