The government has decided to suspend the anthrax vaccination programme across the country from October 14 until after Eid-ul-Azha keeping in mind that cattle should not be slaughtered 21 days inside vaccination.
Mahmudur Rahman, director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, said, ‘The Eid-ul-Azha will be celebrated next month. As we have to wait a minimum 21 days for slaughtering vaccinated cattle for safety, the government has decided to suspend the vaccination programme before Eid.’
He was speaking at a seminar on ‘the outbreak of anthrax in Bangladesh: prevention and cure’ organised by Bangladesh University at its auditorium in the city on Tuesday.
Mahmud said, ‘In the last three weeks no fresh cases of anthrax infection were reported in the country. The number of the anthrax infected patients is 607 till date.’
‘Some cases of anthrax infection, however, were reported in the last few days, but they were detected belatedly; they were infected more than three weeks ago,’ he said.
According to the World Health Organisation’s recommendation, cattle should not be slaughtered 3-6 weeks inside vaccination, Mahmud said.
He also said the routine vaccination programme would resume after Eid-ul-Azha.
The IEDCR director said vaccination of cattle in most of the affected 18 upazilas had been completed.
Bahanur Rahman, professor of microbiology and hygiene department at Bangladesh Agriculture University said that changes in climate like draught causes livestock to forage much closer to the ground and heavy rains increases the concentration of spores caught in standing water.
‘This year northern regions of the country experienced a prolonged draught followed by late rainfall in the monsoon which might be a reason for anthrax outbreak in different areas of the country,’ he said.
Experts have suggested regular vaccination of cattle with proper monitoring and surveillance to prevent further outbreak of anthrax.
They urged the government to conduct epidemiology investigation study and find out what had really caused the recent outbreak.
They advised farmers to carefully dispose of the carcasses of cattle that died from anthrax infection.
Among others, Nazrul Islam, chairman of the University Grant Commission of Bangladesh, MR Khan, national professor, M Anwar Hossain, chairman of microbiology department at Dhaka University and Golam Ali Fakir, acting vice-chancellor of Bangladesh University attended the programme.
