The Botswana Vaccine Institute (BVI), an OIE Reference Laboratory for FMD and public-private partnership between the Government of Botswana and the French pharmaceutical multinational MERIAL, dating back to 1974, today officially launched its new flagship product, the AFTOVAXPUR, a highly purified FMD vaccine containing all FMD serotypes circulating in southern Africa today (SAT1, SAT2 and SAT3).
The launch is the end result of the building of a new production plant in 2009 and 2010 and a new production process initiated in 2010 and 2011, which today enables BVI to use highly purified antigens for the production of standard or client-customised vaccines on short notice. This new vaccine is highly relevant to the control of FMD in this part of the world as it will enable veterinary services to differentiate infected from vaccinated animals, the so-called DIVA principle, which is based on the presence or absence of non-structural proteins (NSP) in the serum.
