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Precious Manomano Herald Reporter
The Department of Veterinary Services is producing 100 000 doses of theileriosis vaccine to fight January disease as part of its growing efforts to save and boost livestock production in the country.
So far over 20 000 doses have been produced so the vaccine will be in use before the rains begin and the ticks that carry the disease are able to start flourishing..
Zimbabwe is moving ahead on several fronts to fight tick-borne diseases by building, rebuilding and renovating dip tanks, ensuring that the subsidised dipping chemicals are brought to the tanks, by handing out tick grease to farmers and now by manufacturing vaccines.
Theileriosis commonly known as January disease, has killed thousands of livestock every rainy season in the past few years.
The four major tick borne diseases that affect cattle are heartwater, anaplasmosis or gall sickness, babesiosis or red water and theileriosis or January disease.
In the past year, January disease accounted for more than 60 percent of all the cattle deaths due to tick borne diseases.
In an interview the Department of Veterinary Services chief director, Dr Josphat Nyika said the vaccines will be used in January disease hotspots adding that up scaling of production is needed to combat January disease outbreaks.
“So far over 20 000 doses of vaccine for theileriosis have been produced. We can now produce vaccines against three of four major tick borne diseases in the country, all except for heartwater. We want to ensure that all the vaccines are produced locally,” he said.
Vaccination is designed to complement the compulsory intensive dipping programme and will be free of charge.
In the same department Dr Jairus Machakwa said Government is developing capacity for the local manufacture of dip chemicals.
“This arrangement will involve Siemens local chemical manufacturers of dip chemicals manufacturing the dip chemicals or acaricide here in our country, for the Department of Veterinary Services. This will improve the availability of dip chemicals, and lower the costs.
Other advantages will include improving capacity utilisation of our local industry, employment opportunities for our people including the women and youths, and at a technical level, production of acaricides that address the problems we specifically may meet in our country as we will use our scientists to profile and characterise our ticks and develop the right remedies for the parasites.
Toll manufacturing of acaricides is estimated to cut the costs of dipping chemicals by up to fifty percent,” he said.
Dr Machakwa added that dip tank construction and rehabilitation are part of the programme to minimise cattle deaths adding that this winter alone, 211 out of the targeted 400 dip tanks have been rehabilitated, and the numbers are increasing each week.
A blitz tick-grease programme under Presidential Input Scheme has also been running for the past two seasons and has been a major boost in the fight against January disease and the programme will continue this season.
During the wet season, animals are susceptible to many challenges, and if a farmer is not careful, they may be killed by various diseases including tick-borne diseases. January Disease is common between December and March and is spread through the bite of the brown ear tick
Online Reporter