An FAO evaluation has estimated that the cattle population in the Kivu provinces was now 174,500 heads, down from 530,000 before the start of the Great Lakes crisis in the early 1990s. The figures represent a loss of 85 percent for North Kivu and 11 percent for South Kivu. In the Ituri area of Province Orientale, the cattle population had gone down from 420,000 to 312,000 during the same period. An FAO report, received by IRIN on Friday, said that cattle deaths due to gastro-intestinal and blood diseases were increasing in eastern DRC due to the neglected state of all dipping tanks and poor veterinary hygiene practices. Anthrax persisted in South Kivu and in parts of North Kivu and Province Orientale, while there was a threat of cattle plague and foot-and-mouth disease in areas bordering Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania, it said. The evaluation mission recommended that emergency cattle vaccination campaigns be organised in the area.
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