General Disease Overview

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral disease which affects all cloven-hooved domestic animals, including cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, and pigs. The disease manifests as blisters on mouth, feet, nose and udders of the infected animal.

The direct economic loss in India due to Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is approximately Rs. 20,000 crore per annum (Venkataramanan et al., 2006), with 80% of this loss attributed to a drop in milk production (Mathew and Menon, 2008). Additionally, countries free from FMD impose trade embargoes on the export of animals and animal products from affected countries, leading to further significant economic losses for India.

Since 2004, the Government of India has implemented a bi-annual vaccination program known as the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Control Programme (FMDCP) to manage outbreaks. As part of this program, 200 pre and post-vaccination samples are collected from each district using a simple random sampling. In 2020, FMD-CP was incorporated into the Livestock Health & Disease Control Programme (LHD-CP). The new sampling scheme includes meta-data collection on age, species, sex, and location of animals. Samples are collected from animals in three age groups (6-12 months, 13-24 months, and >24 months) at a ratio of 5:4:1, following OIE guidelines.