President William Ruto has maintained that the scheduled nationwide vaccination of livestock will continue as planned despite opposition from various quarters.
Beginning January 2025, the government will embark on a nationwide livestock vaccination programme against diseases, targeting 22 million cattle and 50 million goats and sheep.
Speaking on Tuesday, December 10, President Ruto outlined the importance of the vaccination, saying it will increase the market for livestock products as some countries currently have blacklisted Kenya due to its disease control inadequacies.
"To make sure that we open up the market for our livestock products, we must manage our disease prevalence, and it is the reason that I made a policy decision to carry out a national vaccination exercise.
That exercise is necessary because we want to create a country free of disease so that we can market our livestock products to destinations that we have been denied because of our disease control inadequacies," said Ruto.
The head of state said the vaccines that will be used in the exercise are produced in Kenya, by Kenyans.
President Ruto called out the leaders opposing the vaccination and spreading falsehoods about the exercise, saying some of them even don’t have the targeted livestock.
The head of state assured Kenyans of the vaccines’ safety, saying his own livestock will also be vaccinated.
