There isn’t any road connecting Central America and South America, because there is a 60-mile roadless area where Central America connects to South America. That roadless area, the Darién Gap, consists of sixty miles of dense rain forest, steep mountains, and vast swamps near the border between Panama and Colombia. Motorists can drive almost all of the 19,000 miles from from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the northernmost part of North America, to Ushuaia, Argentina, at the southern end of South America. But midway through their journey, when drivers reach southern Panama, they have to take a ferry from Panama to Colombia, because there is no road connecting those neighboring countries.
Why hasn’t a road been built through the Darién Gap? The terrain is treacherous, but that’s true of many other places in the world where roads have been built, like Bolivia’s world-famous “Death Road,” the Yungas Road.
One reason no road has been built through the Darién Gap is “evidence that” the lack of a road through “the Darién Gap has prevented the spread of diseased cattle into Central and North America, which have not seen foot-and-mouth disease since 1954, and, since at least the 1970s, this has been a substantial factor in preventing a road link through the Darién Gap.”
But now there’s good news from the Pan-American Health Organization. Foot-and-mouth disease is now gone from most of South America:
Two out of three cattle in South America are currently located in foot-and-mouth disease (FMD)-free zones where vaccination is not practiced. Across the entire Americas, more than 80% of cattle are in this condition, bringing the region closer to the eradication of the disease…
FMD free zone or country where vaccination is not practiced means that countries have managed to eradicate the disease without relying on systematic vaccination of cattle, which reduces associated costs and improves competitiveness in international markets.
FMD has represented a long-standing threat to food security and the economies of countries in the Americas. Vaccinating cattle has been the primary strategy to control outbreaks and prevent new cases, enabling several countries to achieve eradication. Once the absence of virus transmission is confirmed and internal risks in a territory are eliminated, countries can suspend vaccination and maintain eradication without the need for ongoing vaccination.
