Iran to build plant in Sudan to produce foot-and-mouth disease vaccine

Iran announced plans to construct a plant in Sudan to produce vaccine for foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease. “Iran will build a foot-and-mouth disease vaccine production plant in Sudan in line with the Agricultural Jihad Ministry’s plans to oversees cultivation,” Managing-Director of Esteqlal (Independence) Jihad Institute Mohammad Reza Shafeyeenia said in a press conference in Tehran on Sunday. He said that the credit and money needed for the project will be provided through Iran’s cultivation of plants, specially oilseeds, in Sudan. Iran announced in June that the country’s scientists have succeeded in the production of a new type of foot-and-mouth disease vaccine. "The vaccine can prevent the FMD in the livestock and ruminators which are killed by the disease every year; of course, some changes are witnessed in these viruses every year and we have produced a new type of vaccine after sampling the new virus," Head of Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute in Iran Hadi Famil Qadakchi told reporters in Tehran at the time. He said that Iran needs 500,000 dozes of FMD vaccine every year which is now available in the country's cold storages. In recent years, Iran has taken wide strides in science and technology, particularly in medical and medicinal fields. In 2011, Head of Iran's Pasteur Institute Mostafa Qaneyee had announced that the institute plans to produce human vaccines for rabies and hemophilia diseases. "The center (Pasteur Institute), in cooperation with its affiliated knowledge-based companies, has started a project to produce rabies and hemophilia human vaccines," Qaneyee told FNA at the time. He expressed the hope that his institute would start mass-production of the vaccines within the next 2-3 years, adding that the products will be sold not only in domestic, but also in foreign markets.