Foot-and-Mouth Disease in India: Past, Present and Future Outlook - A Review

Abstract

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) affects domestic livestock population of India causing heavy economic losses to the animal owners. Clinical form of the disease is readily noticed in susceptible livestock population mainly cattle, buffalo and pigs but saliently maintained in carrier animals. Foot-and-mouth disease control programme (FMDCP) is run in India by adopting series of measures from clinical diagnosis of the disease in the field, to sending clinical samples for laboratory diagnosis and till selection of vaccine candidates. Vaccines are used to cover all the susceptible livestock population. This is expected to minimise economic losses to the livestock owners due to the disease. The Government of India has been carrying out intensive FMDCP in a phase wise manner since 2003–2004 and subsequently by 2017–2018; it has covered all the districts of the country. The FMDCP is intending to vaccinate all the susceptible livestock population of the country such as cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats and pigs. That exercise was adopted to make the country free of the disease till 2025–2030. Directorate on FMD is functioning untiringly in this regard and International center on FMD has been set up to serve the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region. In the present chapter merits and shortfalls in the Foot-and-mouth disease prevention and control strategy will be discussed.