Farmers Suffering In Central Lombok Facing FMD: Rare Drugs And Regency Government Encourage Self-Help Handling

JAKARTA - The Department of Agriculture and Livestock (Dispertanak) of Central Lombok Regency, West Nusa Tenggara stated that the handling of the mouth and nail disease outbreak continues. The problem is, currently there is a shortage of livestock medicine in Lombok.

"The livestock medicine that we buy is still rare, now it's difficult for us to get it," said the Head of the Central Lombok Agriculture and Livestock Service, Lalu Taufikurahman in Praya, Monday, June 13, as quoted by Antara.

To anticipate this, his party has purchased drugs outside the region and is still in the process. So that after the drug is available it will immediately provide services to the community for free.

"The regional government has provided a budget of IDR 70 million for handling the FMD outbreak from unexpected funds," he said.

In the service of the PMK outbreak, the community was asked to use self-help funds in groups, so that they could only provide services in terms of officers.

"For the time being, the service is done independently," he said.

He said the spread of the FMD outbreak in Central Lombok has so far continued to increase, reaching 5,934 cases spread across 80 villages in 12 sub-districts. Meanwhile, the number of cattle that have recovered reached 40 percent or 2,721 heads of the total cases.

"60 percent are still in the healing process of the total 5,934 cases," he said.

To prevent the spread of the FMD outbreak, the Central Lombok regional government has extended the closure of all animal markets, even though Eid al-Adha is only a few days away.

"The animal market is still closed until June 20," he said.