In Burundi, a country of agriculture and livestock which has some 700,000 cows panic for its livestock, farmers fearing to lose their main wealth. For the first time in its history, the country is facing Rift Valley fever, an often fatal viral disease that affects cows and small livestock. Reported for decades in other countries of the African Great Lakes region, this disease, then described as mysterious, appeared in Burundi around April 20, with the first cases reported in the northern and northeastern provinces of country, in Ngozi and Kirundo. Since then, the disease has continued to progress.
Cows and sometimes small livestock begin to bleed from the nose, they have bouts of fever and then die. Veterinary analyzes will identify that it is Rift Valley fever, a disease caused by a virus from which Burundi had been spared so far.
No medicine can cure this disease. She will recover very quickly. A week ago, the ministry in charge of livestock had counted some 460 sick cows already sick, including more than a hundred who had already died.
The authorities of these provinces will react very quickly, with the closure of livestock markets, butcher shops to protect the population and the still healthy livestock. Some officials go so far as to ban the sale of skewers in bars.
In the areas spared by the disease, it is psychosis, people took fright and began to sulk milk and meat as well. The consequences are terrible for all sectors of totally devastated livestock farming, as explained by this butcher from Gitega, in central Burundi.
” We did not welcome the ban on the slaughter of oxen because it ruined us since we had built up stocks of cows to be slaughtered, which we can no longer feed. We had contracted loans with banks for this and we can no longer repay them. We also have many problems to maintain our families, but it is especially our workers who are the most affected. “.
The Minister of Livestock, Déo-Guide Rurema, announced two days ago a meeting with the donors, in order to finalize a plan to fight against this scourge and raise the necessary funds for the purchase of the vaccine against the fever of Rift Valley.