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Integrated Disease Control of Newcastle Disease in South
Africa; with special emphasis on achieving this goal in
small-scale commercial poultry farmers and remote rural
populations through the use of new thermostable, user-friendly,
biotechnologically based vaccines.
Effective, conventional live and inactivated
vaccines against ND have been developed for use in commercial
poultry houses (comprising only 30% of the total population of
poultry farmers). This development was undertaken mainly in the
temperate countries of North America and Europe, with little
attention to the environmental realities of poultry in the hot,
tropical areas of the world. A successful, thermostable vaccine
against NDV which stimulate long-term immunity and have no
side-effects, is the key to the control of this devastating
disease in southern Africa as well as other endemic Third World
countries. A commercial market exists in the organized commercial
poultry sector while small-scale and subsistence farmers in
rural/remote areas will be able to adequately protect their
chickens and thus a valuable addition to their food security.
This project is aimed at developing (1) a DNA
vaccine, and (2) a fowlpox virus/Newcastle disease virus
recombinant vaccine against Newcastle disease in birds. Both the
vaccines will be generated using molecular biological and
biotechnological approaches. In addition, nucleic acid based
diagnostics (differential PCR analysis) will be developed and
evaluated to distinguish between the lentogenic, mesogenic and
velogenic nature of NDV isolates. |