The government has unveiled a plan to eradicate livestock Trypanosomiasis within two years, a disease spread by the tsetse fly that costs the economy an estimated KSh 18 billion annually.
Agriculture and Livestock Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said that the drug-resistant cases in the counties had led the country to decide on the use of new drugs and also to introduce high-tech monitoring to deal with the disease.
Approximately 23 percent of Kenya is currently infested with tsetse flies, and 38 counties have been identified as the most tsetse fly-infested areas.
CS Kagwe said that the surveillance work is being expanded to the areas around the national parks and the game reserves where the pests are most likely to come from.
“In fact, this time last month, we managed to eliminate the human African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, as a public health problem. Our immediate aim is to bring trypanosomiasis under such total control that it is no longer a threat to livestock, and we are going to achieve this target,” said Kagwe.
To finance this project, the government has allocated one billion KSh which will also comprise extensive cooperation with researchers from different parts of the continent.
Leaders during the launch invited more sharing of information between the different border areas for the purpose of preventing cross-border outbreaks.
