Protecting a Way of Life in Haiti

In Haiti, the backyard pig represents sustenance, a small measure of wealth and a way of life.

Families raise pigs for food. Small-operation farmers buy pigs from live animal markets and carry them back home. And the pig carries deep symbolism. A local folk religion entails animal sacrifice, with the pig serving as the preferred meat of some spirits.

Not so long ago, however, a deadly pig virus threatened that source of nutrition, income and culture.

In 2009, scientists detected Porcine Teschovirus (PTV), an acute disease that affects pigs of all ages and causes fatal swelling of the pig brain. Pigs died at a high rate, creating more stress on a nation that later endured the devastation of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010 and the lashing of Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

To stem a porcine disaster in Haiti, a nonprofit organization donates a teschovirus vaccine as part of its mission in Haiti to restore livestock production and to support communities to expand into other value chains such as meat, cereals, honey, dairy and eggs production.

Newport Laboratories Inc., a Boehringer Ingelheim company based in Worthington, Minnesota, has produced more than a half million doses of the teschovirus vaccine for that nonprofit.

“We were contacted by the USDA about this problem, and we were asked if we would consider making a custom vaccine for distribution to Haiti,” said Dr. Mark Titus of Newport Laboratories Inc.

“And, of course, keep in mind, this was an extraordinary request because we have no way of importing samples, diagnostic samples or viral cultures or anything biological from this country because of the existence of pretty much, you name it, they have it in terms of foreign animal diseases.”

Czechoslovakia first suffered the fallout from teschovirus, in 1929. Europe sustained major economic loss during sporadic outbreaks from 1940–1960, according to the Swine Health Information Center at Iowa State University.

Tracking vaccine effectiveness is imprecise, given Haiti’s lack of veterinarians, agricultural infrastructure and recordkeeping. But word on the ground is that the teschovirus vaccine in Haiti has been working.

“The vaccine’s effectiveness is anecdotal in capital letters and bold print,” Titus said. “But to me, one of the telling things in the business that we’re in comes down to whether they re-order the vaccine, do they use it?

“If it doesn't work, they're not going to keep asking for it. And we’ve been making this for use in Haiti now for a number of years.”

Keeping the Haitian pig population healthy helps avert a replay of the disaster from the 1980s, when African swine fever infected the porcine population. The disease became so insurmountable that the government, in a controversial step, eradicated the existing pig population and replaced it with new stock.

“The thing that we donate, if you will, is countless hours of regulatory time,” Titus said. “Because this was vaccine going to a foreign country, it requires a safety study, which we provide. Newport Laboratories has graciously agreed to provide my time and that of colleagues in the interest of meeting humanitarian needs, and it’s been supported by senior management at all times.”

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