Livestock and Fisheries Minister Abdur Rahman today said the government has a plan to produce foot and mouth disease (FMD)vaccine for livestock locally as the current local vaccine market for FMD is estimated at around Taka 1500 crore in a year.
"The government has a plan to produce FMD vaccine for the livestock locally instead of importing", said the minister while responding to a supplementary question raised by treasury bench lawmaker Awlad Hossain of Dhaka-4 during the question-answer session at the Jatiya Sangsad.
To this end, the minister said this type of vaccine would be produced locally soon and a decision has been taken to build a research centre for manufacturing the vaccine.
"The FMD is a major challenge for the livestock sector in Bangladesh," he said, adding that at present, the country meets the demand for vaccines mostly by import.
Being a home-grown product, he also said, the new vaccine will be more effective and cost-effective than imported ones.
"In many cases, imported vaccines have been proved fruitless for the livestock," he said.
The vaccine is expected to help boost the country's livestock sector as it incurs a loss of $125 million per year due to the disease.
"Most animals infected with FMD still remain untreated due to the unavailability of the vaccine."
He said the price per unit vaccine will be halved when they start manufacturing those in the country.