News24.com
05/20/2010
Cape Town – The department of agriculture is planning to build a vaccine bank after being caught off-guard by a recent outbreak of the mosquito-spread Rift Valley Fever.
Peter Thabethe, the acting director general of the department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries told MPs on Wednesday that it took about eight weeks to produce a batch of vaccines for the disease, which has claimed at least 17 lives since it broke out in the Free State in February.
“The facility we have could not produce the first batch in the numbers that we needed,” he said.
“The entire first batch of the (vaccine for the) disease was sent to the Free State, but by that time the disease had moved to the Northern Cape and the Eastern Cape.”
Thabethe said that, as a result of the outbreak, the department planned to start a vaccine bank for all types of diseases.
“What we are doing is putting up a plan to produce a vaccine bank… Not only for Rift Fever, but a number of them, including foot and mouth disease… Because you don’t know what happens when.”
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