The elephant was found dead in a forest in Tamil Nadu’s Anaikatti, which borders the forest in Kerala’s Attapadi.
The animal husbandry departments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala have commenced vaccinating livestock near Anaikatti in Tamil Nadu and its bordering Kerala villages, after anthrax claimed the life of a wild elephant in the Anaikatti forest area. It was on Monday that the Tamil Nadu Forest Department said that a wild elephant in Anaikatti region of Coimbatore district died due to anthrax infection. Kerala’s Attapadi of Palakkad district borders Anaikatti. The Tamil Nadu veterinary department and the animal husbandry department are vaccinating livestock, including cows, goats, buffalos and ox, in the areas within an 8 km radius of the Anaikatti forest area. The veterinary department is cautious as the elephant which died due to anthrax would have drank water from nearby water bodies.
Three teams of livestock inspectors were formed under the veterinarians of Anaikatti and Thudiyalur to visit farms and houses in Sembukkarai and Mangarai to vaccinate domestic animals. According to the animal husbandry department officials, around 500 doses of vaccine have been earmarked for livestock and the department is taking extra precautions even though there has been no case of anthrax among domestic animals since 2016, when a cow had died of the disease.
The department also said that the death of the elephant due to anthrax is the first case in the forest areas under the Coimbatore forest division in the past four-and-a-half years. Frontline workers of the forest department and the veterinary and animal husbandry department officials have been pressed into service to sanitise the forest area in a radius of a few kilometres from where the carcass of the elephant that died due to anthrax was found.
The Coimbatore forest division in Tamil Nadu and the Palakkad forest division in Kerala are conducting joint patrolling on whether any other wild animal has died in the forest bordering the Anakati area due to Anthrax. The veterinary and animal husbandry departments of Kerala are also in the process of vaccinating domestic animals in farms and homes near the border areas.
Read: Anthrax attack in Tamil Nadu, kills 37 sheep in Vellore
Source: The News Minute