Regional Delegation of Livestock and Fishery launches Mass annual vaccination programme in Bamenda

By Francis Ekongang Nzante

The Northwest Regional Delegation of Livestock and Fishery on Tuesday July 25 launched the annual mass vaccination programme on livestock geared towards protecting livestock against livestock diseases. The launching exercise was coordinated by Atanga heinendez, Regional Delegate for the Northwest and Mbah Shupong Michael, Administrative Director of the North West Livestock Development Fund known in its French abbreviation as CDENO.

Atanga Heinendez; NW Regional Delegate For Livestock and Fishery

Speaking on the occasion, Atanga Heinendez, the Regional Delegate of Livestock and Fishery said “we are here today to kick-start the annual Mass Cattle Vaccination programme against cattle and other Livestock diseases. Today all the Divisional Delegates and Sub-Divisional Delegates are here and they have constituted 34 teams corresponding to the 34 Sub Divisions that make up the 34 Sub Divisions of the Northwest Region. Last year we made a coverage of 166.000 cattle and this year we are targeting 180.000. There is this adage that prevention is better than cure. The cattle that is not vaccinated remains a threat to vaccinated cattle and that is why we call on cattle rearers to bring out all their cattle for this exercise.The Northwest being the second Region in the country in cattle production has a good reason to protect its cattle.”

Duelling on the challenges that the programme was facing Atanga Heinendez said there was a problem of  infrastructure explaing that for cattle to be effectively vaccinated, they needed to be kept in enclosures and that for most of the time these enclosures were not there. “Such structures need to be constructed in permanent material but for most of the time the material used in the construction is temporal and needs to be reconstructed everytime we need to carry out the mass vaccination programme.The cattle also live in very distant places and to get there usually poses a lot of problems but we are managing with the little that we have to carry out this exercise. There is also the habit by most graziers not to bring out all the cattle that they have. If graziers cooperate and bring out all their cattle, we will be able to eradicate all diseaes affecting our livestock.” He explained if that if this was achieved then continuous increase in meat production would be guaranteed for the Cameroonian market and that of the neighbouring countries.

Mbah Shupong Michael: Administrative Director CDENO

Mbah Shupong Michael, the Administrative Director of the Northwest Livestock Development Fund in a brush with the media during the annual event said “mass vaccination is a routine exercise that we carry out on a yearly bases. Our mission includes animal health protection, every year we take the responsibility to negotiate for vaccins from Garoua and once the vaccins arrive we carry out the exercise that you just saw us carrying out. That is the launching of the exercise where we invite the Divisional and Sub Divisional Delegates who are considered as the actors on the field and all of us including myself, the Regional and the Divisional Delegates act as supervisors, the actors on the field are the Sub Delegates and the personnel under them. Three years ago we discovered that it was better to go straight to those concerned with the vaccination process and we concerted with the Sub-Delegates and the staff in the field to discuss with them and give them the necessary logistics and modalities that they could use in the field to meet their objectives. That’s why we targeted 180.000 cattle and our objective is to reach the cattle breeders no matter where they find themselves. “

Cattle rearing Mbah Shupong Michael intimated was just an aspect of the responsibilities of the North West Livestock Development Fund and that they were exploiting every other means possible to make sure that the Northwest improves upon the second position that it presently occupies in Cattle production and occupies the first position. As a result there are projects that are geared towards introducing Artificial Insemination A.I. “With Artificial Insemination you can increase your production per year. It is about 90 percent successful so you can have 100 female cattle and you carry out A.I. then you can imagine the number of cattle that you can have per year. At the level of CDENO we are working in collaboration with other stakeholders to improve upon Pasture development considering the increasing farmer-grazer problems in the Region. Land is stagnant and population is increasing so cattle breeders should be ready to improve upon the limited land that they have.”  

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