Officials Confirm Foot-And-Mouth Oubreak In Basra - "Probably" 60,000 Animals Infected So Far

[hatrack]

AGHDAD, 8 February 2009 (IRIN) - A local official in Basra Province, 600km south of Baghdad, said on 7 February that there has been an outbreak in the province of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a highly contagious disease affecting cloven-hoofed animals, in particular cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, camelids and deer.

"As of 26 January, our tests found that 1,125 animals were infected with the disease in the entire province while some cases started to appear in nearby provinces," Dr Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi al-Hilfi, general director of the province's veterinary hospital, said.

"But we do believe that the number of cases is higher than this; probably slightly more than 50 percent of the province's nearly 120,000 livestock have been affected because many cases in remote areas have gone unreported," al-Hilfi told IRIN.

So far, the FMD outbreak has killed about 80 young (less than six months old) cattle, buffalos, goats and sheep, al-Hilfi said. He said that there are five types of the disease and the available vaccine, which is given to livestock every six months, can treat only two of them. Al-Hilfi added that infected animals are given antibiotics and pain-killers until the disease type is determined.

EDIT

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/c7338dff4a72d8f27536b8fcaa3d63f7.htm

[crikkett]

1. After war comes pestilence, then famine, then death.

I'm sorry for the bloodshed and the hunger to follow.
Those poor critters deserved better, so do the people.

This is our fault. How will we make it right?