How does a spike in the disease affect farming and the animal industry?

She said that RVF kills and causes abortion storms. “You wake up one morning and find your sheep aborted and lamb foetuses lying all over the field. So you are losing production. So your next crop is wiped out overnight,” said Maja.

Because animals are reluctant to eat well when they are sick one would find that the animals who may not be aborting may also suffer because of being malnourished, she says. Maja added that farmers would, in essence, run the risk of losing their production, their meat and weight gain as well as with dairy, the milk production will drop significantly. 

How can the disease be curbed?

“We have a very efficient and effective vaccine and that is unfortunately the only measure of curbing the spread of the disease. People are encouraged to vaccinate their livestock. There’s two types of vaccines. The live vaccine, which should not be used with pregnant animals because it’s going to result in abortion storms and we also have the inactivated vaccines that should be used in pregnant animals. It’s safe for use in pregnant animals,” said Maja.

In addition, the other way to curb the spread of the virus is to ensure that farmers do not have mosquitoes. Therefore farmers are advised not to have unnecessary water bodies. She warned that animals who are in areas where mosquitoes are highly concentrated will undoubtedly contract the disease.

It has been demonstrated that RVF-infected animals largely impact the sustainability of livestock. Maja encourages farmers and livestock owners to get their animals vaccinated as soon as possible as this will lead to major benefits.  

She encouraged farmers to be patient while waiting for the next batch of vaccine rollouts in the event that vaccines are not readily available. 

Maja told OFM News that people working with these infected animals are highly exposed to the disease in the form of handling aborted animal foetuses or materials from infected livestock. Furthermore, people who drink unpasteurized milk from infected animals may also contract the disease. “In people, it causes fever-like symptoms, so a person would have a headache, sore body pains and general fever.” 

OFM News/Shirndré-Lee Simmons