The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is partnering with private vaccine makers and the government to conduct tests for the world’s first African swine fever vaccine later in the year.
African swine fever (ASF) is a virus affecting pigs with a death rate of up to 100 per cent. Without a vaccine to protect pigs against it, ASF has grown to become a deadly pandemic. The only way to prevent the disease from infecting and killing the whole team is to isolate and treat infected pigs or in extreme cases quickly kill off the infected pigs. In China, more than 1.1 million pigs were killed in 2019 due to ASF costing $111 billion in losses. Amongst smallholders in Africa, the forced culling of pigs can lead to complete ruin for pig farmers.
‘We have developed a vaccine that is entirely effective in our controlled experiments without showing any negative effects on pigs,’ said ILRI’s ASF vaccine researcher Lucilla Steinaa
After successfully testing the vaccine on live pigs for four weeks, ILRI is now working with private sector partners and the Kenya Veterinary Vaccines Production Institute to expand the testing towards the development phase.
According to ILRI scientist Ekta Patel, the developmental organization hopes the vaccine will be quickly fed into a vaccine production pipeline. “After developing the vaccine it will take at least three years before commercial companies take up the vaccine, and work with national organizations to conduct large-scale testing, including ensuring that regulatory processes are met along with registration of the vaccines,” she said.
The first case of ASF was recorded in 1921 in Kenya. According to ILRI, the virus is extremely resilient and capable of surviving for months in pig’s housing, in pork products even when cooked at 56°C, or in clothing. The virus escaped Kenya in 1957 because of airline food waste fed to pigs around Lisbon airport.
In an interview with Farmbizafrica, Samuel Muiruri, a pig veterinarian said that ASF is the second costliest pig disease behind diamond skin disease or Erysipelas. Four in 10 cases of sickly pigs he attends to are affected by the disease that causes death 80 per cent of the time in young ailing piglets.
Swine fever can only be managed through Enrofloxacin– an antibiotic prophylaxis injected to treat the disease. This is followed by a round of broad-acting antibiotics such as oxytetracycline to control fever symptoms. It costs Sh300 to treat an adult pig and Sh200 to treat a piglet.
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