Dear all
 PPR Vaccination was carried out recently in Pastoral and agro-pastoral ecosystem of Southern and Eastern parts of Ethiopia as part of Global PPR progressive control program with the support of the technical partner FAO, SHARE project, Ethiopia. However, in the rest part of the country where smallholder crop-livestock production system is prevailing, the operation will be continued in the future based on the experience gained from this. The experience so far obtained through the present vaccination work showed that sustainable maintenance of cold-chain during transportation, storage and vaccination of the live attenuated PPR vaccine was a critical challenge that should be addressed to get effective immunization. In the great majority districts of this region, they have warm climate, veterinary clinics are poorly facilitated with refrigerator and no field ice-pack containers to maintain the cold-chain. I agree with Dr Peter Roeder suggestion in using the
 facilities of Human health institutions for Cold-chain. But this alternative should be seen as the last option when there is power failure to maintain the cold-chain and critical to save the vaccine product. Otherwise, I think it is very essential to ensure properly functional cold-chain system primarily to undertake effective vaccination campaign, secondly to strengthen the veterinary capacity at the frontline grass root level. With no doubt that the availability of thermostable vaccine would be indispensable in the hot climate of Africa which was learnt from Rinder Pest eradication and made successful finishing of the last vaccination campaign.
 Field experience of PPR outbreaks showed that the disease seems more severe in young animals greater than 3 month old ages with high morbidity and mortality. Currently, NAHDIC in collaboration with FAO are conducting post vaccination sero-monitoring to understand whether the population have attained sufficient protective immunity from PPR vaccination or not. In the meanwhile, we come across different rumors of young goats morbidity and mortality with stomatitis-enteritis syndromes which we could not rule-out the diagnosis but not apparent in adult ages. Thus, as Dr Mohammad Abubakar suggested the availability of pen-side test which enable to detect PPR antigen would be essential for the subsequent disease surveillance along the control-eradication pathway of the disease.    
  
Getachew GARI (Ph.D) 
Vet. Epidemiologist
National Animal Health Diagnostic
and Investigation Center (NAHDIC)
P O Box 04, Sebeta
Tel. 0113383561, 0113380895/94
Mobile: 0912019727

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