“Per the advice of experts and scientists, if we are able to attain the 70 per cent vaccination coverage, then it will be safe for the ban to be lifted for people to return to their normal lives,” he stressed.

 “Already, we have the systems and structures in place and that we have scaled up the ongoing vaccination exercise across the region so as to achieve the expected target in the coming days,” he indicated.

Interview

Mr Yakubu, who was speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic last Friday, said the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) was concerned as it had temporarily deprived the source of livelihood of some of the people.

The interview was to find out the progress made so far in terms of the vaccination exercise and when the ban on ruminants would be lifted in the region.

He noted that so far, more than 30,000 ruminants have been vaccinated in the entire region and that they were hopeful that the number of vaccinated animals would increase to pave the way for the ban to be lifted.

More vaccines coming

He stated that luckily, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Ghana Refugee Board (GRB) have promised to donate more than 105,000 vaccines to help improve the vaccination exercise.

He added that the GRB came on board to support the exercise with vaccines due to the fact that many nationals of Burkina Faso currently seeking refuge in Ghana entered the country with ruminants since they were herdsmen.

“With these additional vaccines coming in, there is no doubt that if they are administered, we will be able to achieve the expected target for the ban to be lifted,” he indicated.

Upcoming Eid celebration

He stated that the RCC was deeply concerned about upcoming Eid-ul Adha festival celebrated by Muslims and that they were doing everything possible to ensure that the ban was lifted prior to the celebration of the event.

He stressed “we announced the ban with a heavy heart and that we are putting out a lot of structures to be able to allow our Muslim brother and sisters to have access to cattle and other ruminants to use for the festival”.

He urged the residents to bear with them since all measures put in place after the region recorded the first case in one district which has now spread to 11 districts was to make the animals safe for consumption after the vaccination exercise.

The regional minister said “the good news is that we are not recording new cases of the disease which meant that the measures taken were yielding positive results”, adding that “fortunately, it has equally helped to prevent the disease from spreading to the North-East and Upper West regions”.

Background

On June 2, 2023, one person reportedly died of anthrax disease after consuming the carcass of a dead cow in Bansi in the Binduri District in the Upper East Region.

Currently, 11 out of 15 Municipal and District Assemblies (MDAs) in the region have confirmed animal deaths with anthrax cases recorded in three districts.

To swiftly deal with the situation, the Regional Public Health Emergency Management Committee initially placed a ban on the movement of ruminants in the eastern part of the region but later extended across the entire region.

Also, there is a ban on the slaughtering, sale and consumption of ruminants as well as an ongoing mass vaccination exercise to control the spread of the disease in the region.