Jakarta, The Indonesia Post – Minister of Agriculture Syahrul Yasin Limpo said that as many as 800,000 doses of the foot and mouth disease (PMK/FMD) vaccine, which had just arrived at Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Tangerang, Banten, early Friday, were immediately distributed to various regions as an effort to accelerate the handling of the FMD outbreak.
“Today we got 800 thousand doses and starting tomorrow we can do delivery. And we have confirmed 3 million doses can arrive in Indonesia, gradually, of course,” said Minister of Agriculture Syahrul in his statement when receiving the arrival of the vaccine at Soekarno-Hatta Airport.
The Minister of Agriculture hopes that the arrival of the vaccine can be swiftly welcomed through good cooperation by local governments, crisis centers, and task forces in districts and provinces, so that they are able to prepare for injections as well as carry out maximum treatment.
“I hope that the task force in the district, the crisis center in the district or province, and nationally have prepared themselves to inject vaccines,” he said.
The Minister of Agriculture explained that the distribution of the vaccine will be carried out in the previously mapped FMD outbreak areas. The Ministry of Agriculture has categorized livestock which are prioritized to get the PMK vaccine.
Vaccine injection will be prioritized for healthy animals in the red and yellow zones. In addition, the FMD vaccine is also prioritized for livestock located in the breeding source area, as well as for livestock located in the dairy farming center area.
So far, said the Minister of Agriculture, the highest spread of PMK is still in the area of animal traffic both by land and sea.
“Animal traffic is one of the sources of epidemic carriers, therefore we hope that animal traffic will travel by sea, land and air through quarantine checks. We hope that on land also the same, of course because there are many rat roads that become its a challenge,” he said.
According to the Minister of Agriculture, the spread of the FMD outbreak was very fast with the transmission of the virus through the air or airborne. Therefore, the Minister of Agriculture asked all officers in the field to really control the presence of humans as well as the entry and exit of livestock.
“This epidemic has an extraordinary acceleration, therefore extraordinary efforts are stronger, being part of the existing answers. Hopefully this can make us all confident that the FMD outbreak can be handled optimally well,” he said. (ojn/bbs)
Comment