Shockingly, the government is not alone to wash its hands of the foot-and-mouth disease (FDM) threat. “Each country has to manage the disease by taking into consideration multiple factors other than animal health,” said the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) when asked by Weekly to comment on the handling of the Mauritius outbreak. “Including political, economic and social factors,” it added. Read that again. What do we have here? We have an international organisation that describes itself as “responsible for improving animal health worldwide”. And yet that very body tells us that countries should think about other things than just animal health. Yes, folks. What we have here is a world organisation that temporarily abandoned its own mission, its raison d'être, seemingly in a diplomatic attempt not to offend the Mauritian government.

Just a few days before, the government of Mauritius did the exact same thing. In a mad move, it gave into religious pressure and allowed disease-ridden farms to sell cows that looked OK to people who wanted them for the Eid al-Adha festival. Of course, everyone knew that the cows’ status as OK-looking wasn’t a guarantee that they wouldn’t spread the disease, caused by the most contagious animal virus there is. We all knew the facts. Animals can be sick for days before showing symptoms. Cows that aren’t sick can still act as carriers of the virus. And so, the government did a little something to protect… itself. The agro-industry minister declared that the buyers and the sellers would take “the full responsibility” themselves. The government would not. Like the OIE would shortly after, the government temporarily abandoned its own mission. It left the country vulnerable and exposed to a contagious animal virus as potentially sick cows were ushered to homes across the island. The fact that the government was carrying out a vaccination campaign at the same time does not make up for the utter madness of that move.

Time will tell what the cost of the government’s breezy unwillingness to govern will be. Experts say that we might never see the end of the FMD if the deer catch it – a vaccination campaign among wild animals is virtually impossible. The economic impact on the industry could be huge, costing ordinary Mauritians their livelihoods. The government failed to protect those people. And the OIE failed them, too.

We expect uncompromising fearlessness from international organisations. We expect from them the courage that governments lack when they dodge unpopular but necessary measures out of fear of losing the next election. We don’t expect them to choose diplomacy over common sense. There is a dangerously thin line between diplomacy and mere cowardice. The will to maintain good relationships cannot be more important than the mission. A country cannot be abandoned nationally and internationally, to fend for itself in the midst of a disease outbreak.

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