Dagi Kimani
12 October 2008
Nairobi — Battered by drought and food shortages, pastoralists in northern Kenya are being pushed to the precipice by a highly infectious sheep and goat disease.
According to Kenya's Ministry of Livestock the disease, known as Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) --literally, plague of small ruminants -- has killed nearly three million animals over the past two years. Another 26 million sheep and goats across the entire northern region are at risk.
More deaths, analysts say, would greatly compromise the supply of red meat to Kenya's urban areas, and further fuel the growing food crisis in the country. Northern Kenya is the country's principal producer of red meat.
Last month, in what critics called a belated move, the ministry launched a vaccination drive to protect the remaining animals against the disease, which is not treatable. Vaccination is the only way to prevent the illness. Kenya's programme will cover four of the country's eight provinces.
Kenya requires at least 15 million doses of vaccine to establish a buffer zone between the endemic area and the rest of the country, according to the ministry. However, by mid-August, only 2.6 million doses had been obtained.
The Kenya Veterinary Vaccine Production Institute does not make the PPR vaccine, and the drug has to be imported from South Africa.
The institute is expected to start producing the vaccine early next year.
According to the critics, the impact on livelihoods and the stressed northeastern Kenya economy would have been less severe if the government had intervened earlier. The government on its parts says that it did not have the funds to respond to the crisis in time.
"We require technical personnel to be involved in the exercise, which is expected to cover the entire northern Kenya region," Livestock Minister Mohamed Kuti said recently. "We have already approached some donors and I am optimistic they will help."
Among the donors are the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the United Nations Development Programme, the African Union's Inter-African Bureau of Animal Resources and Oxfam.
According to ministry estimates, Kenya needs about Ksh1.7 billion ($24 million) to lower prevalence of PPR to less than 10 per cent in endemic areas, including about $8 million for immediate emergency vaccination.
The vaccination programme would have to run for four to five years before the disease is brought under control, although surveillance would have to be ongoing.
PPR is highly infectious among animals, and is transmitted through physical contact and body fluids.
Anywhere between 50 and 100 per cent of a herd will contract the disease within 10 days after the first case is reported, resulting in a death rate of up to 80 per cent.
Symptoms of the disease include a low appetite, discharges from the eyes and nose and a foul-smelling blood-tinged diarrhoea. Affected animals have wounds in their mouths and respiratory systems, making it difficult for them to breath and eat.
For pastoralists in northern and northeastern Kenya, the economic losses caused by PPR have been compounded by a sharp drop in livestock prices due to the prevailing drought, as well as the cancellation of orders on health grounds. So far, losses from PPR are estimated to exceed Ksh1 billion ($14.2 million).
The animals at risk from the disease are estimated to be worth over $230 million, and are the mainstay for some 10 million people.
Ironically, the prevailing dry conditions are driving the epidemic, as animals are watering in only a few waterpoints across the region.
According to the Kenya Livestock Market Council, pastoralists were expecting to sell about a half-a-million animals to the Middle East in the period preceding the recent Ramadhan holidays, but many orders were cancelled due to fears surrounding the PPR epidemic.
"Traders and producers from the affected areas have been locked out of the market in Kenya and abroad; market prices have also fallen drastically as a result," Abbas Sheikh Mohamed, chief executive officer of the council, said recently.
"We had an order for more than a half-a-million goats and sheep to be exported to the Arab world before the end of the year, but we cannot make it because of the poor health standards."
A quarantine imposed on the affected regions also mean that pastoralists are finding it difficult to sell animals to other parts of the country.
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