Chandigarh, August 23:
Taking serious note of the reports of outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in some districts of the state, the Punjab Animal Husbandry Department had immediately deployed teams of veterinarians and doctors in the affected districts and the ring vaccination of 100 per cent livestock within a radius of 5 to 10 km of the affected villages has been completed.
Disclosing this here today Mr. Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa, Minister for Animal Husbandry said that as per the reports, some animals in Ludhiana, Moga and Muktsar Sahib districts of Punjab have contracted foot and mouth disease. He said that the government has taken immediate action to distribute the dosage of foot and mouth disease to all the affected districts. He said that for prevention of foot and mouth disease 81 thousand doses were distributed to the affected districts for ring vaccination. Mr. Bajwa said that he was personally collecting daily reports from the affected districts.
Disclosing further Mr. Bajwa said that the mouth-to-mouth immunization program in the state was being implemented by the Central Government under NADCP scheme. He said that under the scheme foot and mouth vaccine is given by the Central Government in the state. He said that under this scheme vaccination was started in the state on October 17, 2020 under which all the livestock of the state were to be vaccinated.
He said that due to some reasons, the vaccine could not meet the prescribed standards due to failure of foot and mouth vaccine samples and the vaccine was withdrawn by the Animal Husbandry Department of the Central Government and it was said that the new vaccine will be re-supplied only after the availability of the vaccine. Mr. Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa said that the Animal Husbandry Department of Punjab was in constant touch with the Central Government and they hoped that the foot and mouth vaccine would be available by September. Mr. Bajwa said that as soon as the department gets the vaccine from the central government this vaccine would be given to all the livestock of the state.
