ABSTRACT
Among wildlife, the African buffalo seems to be the only long-term maintenance host of FMDV, but, as far as is known, this is confined to SAT-type viruses. Why other types of FMDV are apparently not maintained by buffalo remains to be explained. It is clear furthermore that buffalo transmit SAT viruses, albeit rarely, to other susceptible species with which they come in contact but the mechanisms whereby this occurs remain to be fully elucidated. The fact that buffalo do this presents a fundamental quandary for development and intensification of livestock farming in sub-Saharan Africa, especially where export of livestock and their products is the objective. This makes livestock development within integrated pastoral/wildlife systems problematic.
Controlling FMD by vaccination of wildlife in sub-Saharan Africa is not feasible because of the logistical problems of vaccinating large numbers of free-ranging animals. Furthermore, FMD vaccines appear to be less effective in some wildlife species than in livestock and, as has been shown in livestock, currently available FMD vaccines do not necessarily protect against infection as opposed to disease. Available inactivated vaccines also only provide transient immunity and need to be administered repeatedly to maintain high levels of herd immunity.
The use of fencing to separate wildlife potentially infected with FMDV from livestock has been used successfully in southern Africa to prevent outbreaks in the latter and the possible extension of this approach to other regions of sub-Saharan Africa is a subject of debate. It is strongly opposed by the environmental lobby but, on the other hand, unless ways of profiting from the large livestock populations of the arid and semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa can be found, the human populations of those regions will be consigned to continuing poverty for the foreseeable future.
