By Flavia Ajok
The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries is today set to receive 3 million doses of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccines from Egypt.
This was confirmed during a meeting between Agriculture Minister, Frank Tumwebaze and a delegation of Egyptian officials held at his office in Kampala.
He said the move would bolster efforts to curb the current outbreak of FMD that has affected farmers in several parts of the country.
The delegation led by Major General Mohsen Abdel Hakam Azouz, the Director of the Veterinary Service Department in Egypt, assured the Minister that the vaccines would arrive in the country this afternoon
“His Excellency President el-Sisi ordered a quick supply of 6 million doses of the vaccine from Egypt’s strategic reserves to help our brothers in Uganda overcome the pandemic quickly. As I speak, there are people preparing to load the first batch of 3 million doses to land in Uganda tomorrow, Thursday,” Mohamed noted.
Frank Mugabi, the spokesperson National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) said this would only be the first batch of the 10 million vaccines Egypt is set to dispatch to Uganda.
“This collaboration has led to production of two types of vaccines one is injectable and while the other is oral vaccine, during the twelve month of field evaluation trial of these vaccines all the animals that was spread there was no death reported due to tick and tick born diseases during the trial period.” Mr. Mugabi said.
He added that through this arrangement, NARO will produce a monovalent FMD vaccine with serotype SAT-1 to be reconstituted with the trivalent vaccine from Egypt containing serotypes O, A, and SAT-2, to have a complete quadrivalent vaccine.
