Dear Colleagues, Dr Karim Tounkara has made a strong contribution on behalf of AU-PANVAC. He argues against handing out free PPR vaccine to everyone who wants it, and gives some clear indication of his thinking about epidemiological targeting of vaccination. Concerning handing out free vaccine I fully agree with Dr Tounkara. I should have made it clear in my first contribution on this subject that I was not advocating that PPR vaccine be given out freely by government to all who want it but that it be widely and readily (freely) available to those who want to PAY for it. The mistake is mine. I most certainly do not want to disincentivise private veterinarians and CAHWs or put them out of work, in fact the contrary as I want them to be more involved. To me it seems only right that a livestock owner should be able to immunize his stock at his cost and at his time of choosing. This last weekend I was on “safari” surrounded by elephants, enjoying the interface between wild ruminants and sheep and goats and, fortunately, still able to access this conference. Time spent with a Maasai livestock owner was instructive. Having routinely immunized his sheep and goats against SGP at his own cost and effort for three of the past four years he admitted that he became complacent and, deciding that the disease risk was low or non-existent (his flocks had not suffered for three years) and that finding vaccine is a hassle, he chose not to vaccinate last year. Now he has SGP in the young stock and is desperate to vaccinate. His main concern at present is that he has been unable to purchase SGP vaccine from either of his local public veterinary offices and had to resort to the national veterinary vaccine supplier. I asked about how he carries out his vaccinations. He is well aware of the need for a cold chain because of the FMD vaccination which he regularly uses on his cattle. He goes himself to the national vaccine supplier to buy this vaccine keeping it on ice in his own cool box and using it as soon as possible on return to his animals. He has his own repeating syringe and often employs certain other people who are known to be good at the actual injection of vaccine into animals. These are not CBAWs or “Paravets” because the trained CBAHW in his area is usually too busy working for “big” livestock owners and cannot be relied upon. He also has a problem with vaccines that come in vials or ampoules of 100 doses when even 25 might sometimes be too many. He has difficulty giving away some of his unfinished and reconstituted doses (how long these are kept cool for was difficult to assess). (Dr Mariner in his first contribution to this e-conference mentions that his programme is developing 25 dose vials of PPR vaccine -Wed 12 Feb ). Interestingly, when I told him that Ol’odua (rinderpest) had gone, been eradicated, he asked if I was sure about this because he was now seeing it in his goats. The clinical signs he described sounded much like PPR but no matter how much I tried to convince him that this was a different disease I don’t think he fully believed me. Room for more farmer awareness here I feel. My suggestion is that if we can allow farmers (and/or their private animal health providers) to buy appropriate vaccines, use their own cold chain and inoculate their own stock against FMD and SGP can we not also do this for PPR? This is the sort of sub-theme that could be discussed in more detail in PPR-GREN under the main theme of "immunization and vaccination" developing some clear recommendations for the OIE-FAO to possibly include in their strategy. Moderator. ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the FAO-AnimalHealth-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=FAO-AnimalHealth-L&A=1