Livestock Health and Disease Control Programme (LHDCP) and Mobile Veterinary Units

The Livestock Health and Disease Control Programme funds animal disease control — mass vaccination campaigns and veterinary service delivery.

For a livestock keeper this is the most immediately valuable animal husbandry programme, because the diseases it vaccinates against are the ones that kill animals or destroy their productivity, and the vaccination is delivered in mass campaigns at no cost to the farmer.

Vaccination delivered

In 2023-24 the FMD figure was 20.2 crore vaccinations covering 4.31 crore farmers, so the FMD campaign grew by more than half in a year.

Mobile Veterinary Units

4,019 Mobile Veterinary Units are operational, and they had served about 96.86 lakh farmers at their doorstep cumulatively up to June 2025. An MVU is a vehicle with a vet, equipment and medicines that comes to the animal — which matters, because moving a sick large animal to a clinic is often impractical.

Funding

₹1,532.68 crore was released to states and Union Territories across 2023-24 and 2024-25, with a further ₹1,333.57 crore to other agencies.

• Mass vaccination against foot and mouth disease, brucellosis, classical swine fever and PPR, delivered through state campaigns at no cost to the farmer.
• Mobile Veterinary Units that bring a vet, equipment and medicines to your animal — 4,019 are operational nationally.
• Disease control at the herd and area level, which protects your animals even beyond your own vaccination.

Why it is worth acting on: foot and mouth disease does not usually kill an adult animal but it collapses milk yield and body condition, often permanently. Brucellosis causes abortion and is transmissible to humans. These are losses that a free vaccination prevents outright.

• All livestock owners — the vaccination campaigns are mass campaigns covering the animal population in an area, not application-based benefits.
• Mobile Veterinary Unit services are available to farmers in the areas the units cover.

• Vaccination happens in campaign rounds on a schedule set by your state. If you miss the round, you wait for the next one — so find out the schedule rather than waiting to be found.
• Mobile Veterinary Unit coverage varies by district.
• The official annexures do not name the parent scheme for every component or publish the full programme guidelines. Your state animal husbandry department is the operative source.

How to use it

1. Ask your village or block animal husbandry office when the next FMD, brucellosis, PPR or CSF vaccination round is due in your village, and make sure your animals are presented. This is free and is the single highest-value thing to do for your livestock.
2. Get the vaccination recorded on your animal's health card or in the vaccinator's register, and keep a note of the date. A documented vaccination history matters for insurance claims and for selling an animal.
3. Find out whether a Mobile Veterinary Unit covers your area and get its contact number before you need it.
4. Ask about livestock insurance under the National Livestock Mission, and about artificial insemination under Rashtriya Gokul Mission, in the same visit.

Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying official website

• Animal details and existing health or vaccination record
• Identity proof, where your state requires registration