"The epidemic has mostly spread in the Hautes Plaines region”
For the past few months, ovine rinderpest has killed thousands of sheep and the livestock farmers feel as if they have been abandoned to their fate. The epidemic has especially spread in the Hautes Plaines region. I’ve been speaking to several livestock farmers, who say that they haven’t received the vaccinations that are normally delivered by vaccination centres run by the Ministry of Agriculture. Where are these vaccines?"One vet for 500,000 sheep" Larbi Tahar, a farmer in the El Abiodh Sidi Cheikh region, was more lucky. For the time being, none of his sheep have succumbed to the disease – he believes this is because he was able to isolate his flock in an enclosure. He says that farmers in his region have not had enough support in dealing with this devastating epidemic.
To keep my sheep from mixing with those belonging to other farmers, I keep them in their own enclosure. I also avoid bringing them to the pastures because I don’t want them to come into contact with other farmers' sheep. I went to the veterinary centre run by the Ministry of Agriculture a few days ago and they told me that there were no available vaccines. In our region, there is only one veterinarian for an estimated 500,000 sheep. And he doesn’t even have a car.
In the region of Chréa, which is about 60 kilometres south of Algiers, a group of livestock farmers blocked a road with the bodies of dead sheep to protest the government’s failure to develop an emergency plan to contain this disease.
WARNING: These videos contain images that some people may find upsetting. The top video shows the roadblock started by angry farmers. The second video shows livestock farmers burying the sheep killed by this epidemic.
The authorities maintain that they have taken measures against the ovine rinderpest epidemic. The Ministry of Agriculture announced that about 3,000 sheep had died of the disease. In late December 2018, the Ministry announced that they had allocated 400 million Algerian dinars (around €3 million) to buy vaccines. On January 9, however, many livestock farmers, including those in El Abiodh Sidi Cheikh, had still not received the vaccinations, according to Observer Ben Cheikh. The Ministry of Agriculture announced that weekly markets would be closed until January 25. Unlike the authorities, a veterinarians' union does not think the situation is under control. “The authorities need to distribute 25 million vaccines in the next 15 days, otherwise eight million more sheep will die,” said the organisation’s spokesperson, Najib Dahmane, in a press statement. Source - https://observers.france24.com