South Africa struggles to contain foot-and-mouth disease outbreak

Pretoria, Jun 8 (Prensa Latina) South Africa's Ministry of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development has called for limiting as much as possible the movement of "cloven-hoofed animals" as a means to contain the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease nationwide.

June 8, 2024
01:00

In a statement, the Ministry appealed to farmers and owners of such animals in all provinces to refrain from any movements of livestock to contain the zoopathology in the southern Eastern Cape province.

This will allow for more undetected affected properties to be found and quarantined to prevent further spread of the disease, it added.

According to the text, cases of FMD have so far been confirmed on five farms in the Humansdorp and East London, after epidemiological research was carried out by the National Veterinary Reference Laboratory.

Clinical signs of FMD were observed in the first farm reported with the disease and samples were collected immediately on April 30.

Since then, signs of the disease were found in four more farms in Humansdorp and one in the East London area.

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