South Africa needs 28 million FMD vaccine doses to tackle outbreak

South Africa needs 28-million doses of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccine this year, in order to take a major step in breaking the back of the countrywide outbreak.
That’s according to Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen who is visiting the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands to monitor the roll-out of a mass vaccination campaign to fight the disease.

Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen says that the distribution of the one- million foot and mouth disease vaccine doses that have arrived, will focus on the provinces that have been the most affected. pic.twitter.com/c3iMWNSOQB
— SABC News (@SABCNews) February 21, 2026

Steenhuisen says they aim to vaccinate 80% of the national herd of 14-million cattle by the end of the year, which is expected to reduce the number of cases by 70%. They have commitments to supply 13.5 million doses already.
Steenhuisen says experts recommend mass vaccination, rather than chasing new cases.
“The key strategy that they came forward with and the one that they recommended and the one that we ultimately adopted, is the mass vaccination strategy so that we can get ahead of foot-and-mouth disease in South Africa. We also need to ensure that we can prevent outbreaks from happening rather than reacting to outbreaks. It’s a similar model to what was used in Argentina and Brazil when FMD was wildly out of control.”
VIDEO | Millions needed to rollout FMD vaccine countrywide

 
 
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