Foot and Mouth Disease a big blow to farming

James Kagolo, a butcher at Manja B Village in Kisekka sub-county has not been selling pork since the middle of December 2023 and he and the members of his family are living a difficult life due to loss of income.

Many other butchers of pork, beef, mutton and goat meat in Lwengo and the neighbouring districts have been out of work for several weeks due to a quarantine imposed on almost the entire region following the  outbreak of the much dreaded Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD).

The quarantine regulations are that no animals or animal products must be moved from the infected region to a non-infected region and that there should not be slaughtering of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs in the infected areas or selling or consuming of animals products such as milk, ghee, meat, and skins and hides. Cow dung which is much used as organic manure, must not be transported from infected areas to non-infected areas.

Quarantine

Bosco Kiddu, Kampala City Abattoir chairman, says that the quarantine imposed on the major cattle and goat producing districts has resulted in meat shortage at the abattoir and an increase in the price of meat. According to the City Abattoir Spokesman, Salongo Kimera, a cow that used to be sold at Shs1.6m before the FMD quarantines is currently sold at Shs1.8m or even Shs2m. He went on to disclose that the current price for a kilogramme of beef is Shs12,500 or Shs13,000 at the abattoir. “If the prices here go up, the butchers at their respective workplaces certainly charge higher prices,” he said.  Ali Jumba a cattle trader who normally operates between Kampala and Sembabule and Lyantonde districts says he has had to turn to Karamoja Sub-region and Northern Uganda where FMD is not yet so rampant. “However, the animals from those regions are smaller than those I used to get from Sembabule and Lyantonde, and the profit is much smaller,” he said.    

Vaccines

According to the Ministry for Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries, the Foot and Mouth Disease has been confirmed in 35 districts in Uganda. Frank Tumwebaze the minister of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries, recently asked for Shs76b for the purchase of 10 million vaccine doses against Foot and Mouth Disease, surveillance tools, motorcycles and more personnel and their facilitation. He said the ministry did not have sufficient funds to address the FMD challenge.

The Foot and Mouth Disease infected districts are spread across almost all regions of the country, including, Ssembabule, Mubende,  Gomba, Kyotera, Lwengo, Fort Portal, Rakai, Ngora, Kibuku, Bukedea, Butalejja, and Mbarara City, among others. A sizable amount of vaccines have been purchased by the ministry and handed over to the district local authorities.

However due to the biological composition of the vaccines they are rather complicated to quickly dispense. The explanation provided is that the vaccines have a short shelf life. You order and the manufacturer makes some for you in a particular period.

There are different strains of FMD and it is important to know what type of vaccine to order for. The cost per vaccine dose according to the Daily Monitor article is two dollars (about Shs7,600) which is low and rather affordable but purchase is made difficult due to the sophisticated supply chain, which explains the repeated FMD outbreaks in the country.

Vaccination is supposed to be done every six months and according to Tumwebaze the government has committed to provide free vaccines to farmers for the time being. He also spoke about a much bigger mandatory FMD vaccination program that is being planned by the government.

How FMD spreads

According to Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS 2018) Uganda has a cattle population of about 14.2 million, a goat population of about 15.6 million, a sheep population of some 4.5 million and a pig population of some 4.1 million. 

Dr Paul Kanoonya, retired Masaka District Production Officer, says Foot and Mouth Disease is the most ancient animal disease known to mankind. “It attacks cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs and to a lesser extent, even human beings,” he said. “To countries and communities that heavily depend on animal products export it can cause big economic hardships. It is not highly fatal but it is extremely contagious and spreads very easily. When the animal is infected with FMD it cannot eat or walk due to blisters and wounds in the mouth --- the gums, tongue, and palate and wounds all around the feet. It keeps seated with its mouth open and saliva dripping out. It loses appetite and develops a fever resulting in loss of weight and low milk yield.”

He went on to say that an attack of FMD lasts several weeks but most African cattle survive it although nearly all exotic cattle die from it. He said also that since the disease is caused by a virus it cannot be cured by medical treatment and relief is only obtained by treatment of symptoms. Prevention of the disease is possible through vaccination and isolation of sick animals.

Control

Dr Kanoonya believes that farmers should make strong boundaries around their farms to prevent free movement of strange cattle from other areas to their farms. He said it is risky for animals belonging to different farmers to graze in the same area and to drink water from the same pond all the time. “That is why it is important to quarantine the farms in an infected area for up to at least thirty days and to make sure there are no more cases of Food and Mouth Disease.

Former Cabinet Minister, Gerald Sendaula, who is a commercial cattle keeper says, “Foot and Mouth Disease is not new in Uganda. We have always had it even before colonial times. And we have always had quarantines imposed. But in the colonial days the quarantines worked and they produced the desired results.  However, today some people tend to mix politics with serious animal health issues. We also have bribery and corruption, which defeats the rationale of quarantines. A disease like FMD breaks out and the government imposes a quarantine to stop its spread and some people look at the quarantine as a punishment to stop farmers in the quarantined area from getting their daily bread.  And with corruption around, diseased animals and their products find their way out of the quarantine area and the disease eventually becomes an entire national problem.”  He thinks the FMD would not have gotten to its current almost epidemic situation if people had strictly observed the quarantine regulations in their individual districts earlier on.

Sendaula further argues that FMD should not be a big budgetary problem since it is known that vaccination is routine and has to be done twice every year. “The delays in the provision of the vaccine doses must be avoided at whatever cost because no disease can wait until money is obtained,” he said. There must always be a budget for regular and timely vaccination of the animals. The quarantine regulations must be strictly observed whenever there are incidents of FMD outbreaks. Politics and corruption must be kept out.”