Cuttack, June 12: Animal disease experts emphasised on vaccinating all livestock (excluding poultry) in and around Kaniha in Angul district to check the spread of anthrax.

Suspected anthrax has been detected in Kaniha for the first time.

“The vaccination of livestock population (excluding poultry) needs to be over immediately to check the spread of anthrax in Angul, a district that was not known for being endemic to the disease,” project co-ordinator of the Animal Disease Research Institute Sunil Kumar Das told The Telegraph today.

A team from the institute at Phulnakhara nere here had rushed to Kaniha to start the vaccination programme.

Fifteen persons of Suleipal village in Kaniha block were referred from the Angul district headquarters hospital to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack yesterday after they had shown symptoms of anthrax infection on their skin.

Eleven goats died in the village on June 8 and 9.

“An investigation revealed that not all of the goats had consumed the meat,” Angul chief district veterinary officer Satchidananda Patnaik said.

Das said anthrax could form dormant spores that lived in the soil and survived in harsh conditions for more than 60 years.

Anthrax commonly infects livestock (excluding poultry), which ingest or inhale spores while grazing in the anthrax-infected areas, where spores already existed.

People are usually infected with anthrax after consuming infected meat or getting infected directly while working on the fields where anthrax spores already exist, he said.

“As a preventive measure, ring vaccination of livestock (excluding poultry) has been undertaken at villages within 5km radius of Suleipal,” said Das, who is camping in the area as part of the institute’s team.

“Blood samples of the dead goats and soil samples will be sent for laboratory testing to ascertain whether anthrax spores are present in the area,” he said.

“Angul is not known to be a district endemic to anthrax. So, efforts are also on to ascertain whether the dead goats were local or had been procured from outside the district recently,” animal husbandry and veterinary services deputy director (disease control) Manoranjan Satpathy said.

The institute had identified 18 districts in the state as endemic to anthrax.

The districts are Kalahandi, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur, Nuapada, Rayagada, Gajapati, Sambalpur, Bargarh, Jharsuguda, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Phulbani, Nayagarh, Puri, Khurda, Jagatsinghpur and Cuttack.