JOHANNESBURG - The Agriculture Department has welcomed the arrival of one million foot and mouth disease vaccines from Argentina.
The department says the vaccines will play a crucial role in preventing the further spread of the disease.
An additional five million doses from three international suppliers are expected to arrive by the end of March.
Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said there are plenty more vaccines to come.
“We will continue to make sure that we have enough to roll out so that we're able to break the back of this current outbreak, but then also to get South Africa firmly onto a new palm. We spent a lot of years running around after FMD. These vaccines will give us an opportunity to get ahead of it.
“The focus will be on the provinces that have been the most affected, KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State, and the North-West Province, and to some degree in Mpumalanga. So they will get the bulk of this, but every province will receive something from this first batch to enable us to begin breaking the back of the virus going forward.
Steenhuisen said the vaccines will be distributed accordingly.
“Obviously, the primary sectors are where the disease is at its most virulent, and it is spreading in the cosmos, so those primary areas will be focused. We have a strategy for dairies and a strategy for feedlots, but also at the same time a strategy for communal areas.”