List of African countries where Veterinary Services remain operational as "essential services"

Maintaining the activities that are crucial to public health

Veterinarians are an integral part of the global health community. Beyond the activities linked to the health and welfare of animals, they have a key role in disease prevention and management, including those transmissible to humans, and to ensure food safety for the populations.

In the current situation, it is crucial that, amongst their numerous activities, they can sustain those necessary to ensure that:

• national and regional veterinary regulatory and inspection services can oversee the integrity of public health

• only healthy animals and their by-products enter the food supply to guarantee food safety for the populations,
• emergency situations can be addressed,
• preventative measures, such as vaccination against diseases with a significant public health or economic impact, are maintained.
• priority research activities continue.

According to the latest information, collected by our regional representations, these are the countries where the OIE – WVA call has been heeded and where part or all of the Veterinary Services have been labelled “essential” and are therefore exempted from overall lockdown measures targeting non-essential goods and services.

This page is continuously being updated. Last updated on : 27 May 2020. Please send any updates to Dr. P. Bastiaensen   Submitted information will be validated with the OIE Delegate before publishing.