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NYAMLEL - 10 Oct 2012

Outbreak: thousands of cattle untreated in Aweil West

The state of Northern Bahr El Ghazal has run out of vaccines after injecting 2500 cattle in Nyamlel on Monday, amid grave warnings of the severity of the outbreak in the state. Only a quarter of nearly ten thousand cattle in the state’s north-western county were vaccinated before the allocated supply of vaccines was exhausted.

On Monday more than 2500 head of cattle were vaccinated by the state ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries in Nyamlel, the seat of Aweil West County.

Peter Jok Dut, Director for Animal Health and Disease Control, said the campaign targeted cows, goats and sheep because heavy flooding this year has caused outbreaks of diseases.

 “We have started vaccination in Nyamlel, Aweil West County and later we will move to other counties. Already there are 9859 head of cattle that in Aweil West County need to be vaccinated and yet the ministry is out of vaccines. It’s reported that 86 head of cattle died of the different diseases that broke out in Aweil West County. Therefore the ministry is targeting all the counties in the state.”

The director also pointed out that tsetse fly infections have killed more than 400 cattle in Aweil South County.

“One of the challenges we face is that we lack enough money, lack fuel, and lack spare parts for the cars even if there is money for buying the spare parts,” said Peter Jok.

To contribute toward these needs, the community are asked to pay a fee of 1 piaster South Sudanese pounds per cow vaccinated.