Addis Ababa, — Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda have signed today a cross border Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly mitigate animal diseases in the region.

The MoU signed in Addis Ababa helps to undertake joint disease surveillance and synchronized vaccination to enhance TADs control and livestock trade.

As a preventive measure, disease surveillance helps to reduce animal health-related risks and major consequences of disease outbreaks on food production and livelihoods.

The four countries agreed on a draft Animal disease information sharing protocol, which was validated in October 2023.

The signing of this protocol is an important milestone for timely information sharing with regard to state of TADs across the borders.

IGAD commends the financial support of Africa Development Bank (AfDB), through BREFON project, for this action.

IGAD Center for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD) facilitated the signing of cross border MOU among the countries.

According to a media brief issued by IGAD, the region is home to over 532 million heads of livestock including poultry presenting a huge potential for wealth creation and economic progress.

Large proportion of livestock is produced by pastoral and agro-pastoral system in Arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) where mobility is part of the production system.

Seasonal livestock movement involved crossing international borders whereby Transboundary animal diseases (TADs) easily spread from one country to another.

Moreover, control or management of TADs require cooperation between two or more countries sharing border to mitigate the diseases' threat to the economic, trade and/or food security of the affected countries.

Hence, harmonized approach for cross-border area TADs management is important to mitigate further spread and economic losses.

Cross-border area animal disease information collection and sharing with neighboring countries is essential to support effective and timely decision-making to prevent spread of disease.