IAEA Helps Burundi Ensure Food Security with Healthy Cattle

Burundi is preventing disease outbreaks in livestock and breeding hardier cattle capable of greater milk production with the support of the IAEA. Staff trained by the IAEA at fully equipped national laboratories in Burundi are now using nuclear and related techniques to process significantly more artificial insemination and diagnostic samples, helping to ensure healthy and high-producing livestock.

Burundi's livestock population is at risk from animal and zoonotic diseases, such as foot and mouth disease, East Coast fever and bovine tuberculosis. The IAEA through its joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture has upgraded equipment at the National Veterinary Laboratory and the National Center for Artificial Insemination (NCAIGI) in Burundi and trained the national staff at NCAIGI to diagnose animal diseases using PCR tests. The National Veterinary Laboratory is now able to process 10 000 pathogen samples each year - more than a threefold increase from its previous capacity.

This autumn, five IAEA fellows from Burundi are learning techniques related to transboundary animal diseases at institutions in Kenya, Malawi and Tunisia. By detecting contagious animal diseases early on, scientists can help to prevent the spread of outbreaks that affect large numbers of cattle. With IAEA support, trained laboratory staff detected a Rift Valley fever outbreak in Burundi in December 2021. More than 900 clinical cases were identified, with 560 cattle reported dead. Laboratory technicians were able to diagnose the disease accurately, which enabled decision makers to limit the spread of Rift Valley fever through monitoring and the vaccination of more than 700 000 cattle.

"Before I was trained, I could not provide reliable results. With the new knowledge, I feel empowered, and it is much easier for me to perform advanced testing. Farmers are now bringing their samples to check for various diseases, such as brucellosis, when they are planning to sell animals, and it adds value to the price when it turns out to be a negative result. For animal movement purposes, we are getting more than 500 samples per month from various development partners, and we conduct analyses for priority diseases," explained Mbazumutima Magnifique, a laboratory technician at the National Veterinary Laboratory.