Government in denial over foot-and-mouth disease

Uzbekistan's southern and eastern provinces have suffered an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease with farmers and agricultural workers at a loss as to how to fight or take proper precautions against it, inasmuch as local authorities andcentral government tend to ignore the problem, according to agricultural sources. Abdurashid Jalilov, a farmer in Mekhnatabad District of Syrdarya Province, 200 km southwest of the capital, Tashkent, told IRIN that the disease had begun affecting his cattle at the end of November. "Blisters appeared in and around the mouths of the cattle, then on their hooves. They couldn't eat or move. We called a vet and he advised us to wash the cattle's mouth and hooves with permanganate of potash solution," he said. Abdurashid, together with his children, then treated their 50 head of cattle three or four times a day for a week. "And now we have only three cows still sick, but all of my cattle lost significant weight," he added. There are between 4 and 6 million head of catle in Uzbekistan. The population is predominantly rural with one in two people in the countryside relying on cattle as a source of income The critical period for Abdurashid is over, but it has only just started for other farmers. The village close to his farm has also been struck by the outbreak. Many people have been treating their cattle for the second time. Odina, another villager, said her two cows had been infected, and she and her 13- and 11-year-old children couldn't sleep for almost 10 days as the milk from animals represented their sole source of income. "And now we should put in a lot of effort to ensure that our cattle regain the weight they lost," she said, adding, however, that this might prove to be impossible to achieve during the winter when hay was in short supply and expensive. Uzbek law prohibits publishing or broadcasting information on livestock diseases. But concealing the extent of foot-and-mouth disease could be counterproductive, observers noted. The disease is endemic to the area and the virus which causes it can survive in for long periods, with even the cold of winter unable to eradicate it, many in Uzbekistan believe. Denying the existence of the outbreak could result in an epidemic capable not only of devastating the country's rural economy but also widespread health problems if the disease reached the human food chain. When foot-and-mouth disease caused enormous losses in European countries in 2001, Uzbekistan officially declared itself free of the disease, and that it had last been detected in 1990. However, local people say foot-and-mouth disease had always been endemic in the southern provinces, but without reaching epidemic proportions as it finally did in the southern province of Kashkadarya in November this year. Local people noticed that the provincial sanitary-epidemiological centre, veterinarians, customs services and police were then put on the alert to prevent the spread of the disease in the province, which it was believed to have entered from neighbouring Tajikistan and Afghanistan. However, although local authorities enhanced security on the border, they failed to acknowledge the fact that the highly infectious disease was already spreading alarmingly quickly within the province, observers noted. "The infectious diseases department of the Kashkadarya veterinary service rejected reports that foot-and-mouth disease was widespread in the province. They said the disease, detected only in the province's Karshi District, was stomatitis [an inflammation of the mouth], but not foot-and-mouth disease," a local journalist, who did not want to be named, said. "But local people asserted that the disease's symptoms were consistent with those of foot-and-mouth disease and that it was also widespread in other districts of the province." Although the disease has now reached Sirdarya Province, closer to Tashkent, the authorities and local media, mainly government-controlled, are maintaining their silence. This refusal to acknowledge the problem is preventing people from combating the disease and stopping its spread. "People don't know the measures they should be taking in this situation - like reducing contact with infected animals, keeping them separately, disinfecting farms and houses, wearing protective clothing. They have not been instructed to do so. They have no idea that people who visited areas affected by the disease could carry the virus and spread it anywhere they go," a local observer said. Abdurashid, who claims to be an experienced farmer in possession of a former government-owned farm with the necessary infrastructure that could be used to tackle an epidemic, still keeps his sick cattle together with those which are still healthy. A shallow pool in front of the farm gate, once filled with disinfectant solution used to disinfect transport and cattle entering and leaving, is no longer in use. "Previously, farms used to be government-owned and had the staff to take appropriate measures against possible cattle diseases, and so the government normally managed to eradicate diseases," a veterinary source said. "They all went bankrupt when the government stopped subsiding them. Eventually all the farms were bought up by private entrepreneurs, leaving local government administrations untroubled by fears of foot-and-mouth disease, because it was no longer their business," he added. According to some other observes, official reluctance to confront the reality of foot-and-mouth disease may damage the Uzbek government's reputation and serve as a setback to efforts to develop tourism, in that many countries advise their travellers against visiting countries where the disease is found. Moreover, the outbreak could have a long-lasting negative effect on Uzbekistan's exports of dairy products.