Journalism of Courage
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Haryana Animal Husbandry and Dairy Minister, JP Dalal, has said that Hisar’s National Research Centre on Equines (NRCE) has developed a vaccine for prevention of lumpy skin disease in animals, which will soon be made available to the cattle rearers of the state.
Dalal told The Indian Express Thursday that it may take 1.5-2 months to get necessary approvals for the newly developed vaccine.
The minister said that he recently spoke to Union Animal Husbandry and Dairy Minister, Parshottam Rupala, regarding the vaccine and the Union minister assured him cooperation in getting approvals at earliest so that the spread of the disease can be stopped.
Contacted, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) deputy director general (animal science) BN Tripathi said, “The Union Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairy needs to allow emergency use of this vaccine, which ICAR institutes (NRCE, Hisar and Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, Uttar Pradesh) can provide. Process for commercialization of the vaccine is already underway, which may take 1-2 years. However, ICAR institutes can provide 2.5-3 lakh doses of vaccine every month until the commercial manufacturers roll out the vaccine for field use. The vaccine has been found to be quite safe in limited field trials.”
Meanwhile, Haryana minister Dalal said that the goat pox vaccine, which has already proven effective to prevent the contagious lumpy skin disease in livestock, is currently available in the market. The minister said, “To cover the entire livestock of 18-19 lakh cows in Haryana, we need around 19 lakh vaccine shots. Initially, we had ordered 3 lakh doses of this vaccine which has been distributed in the field already.”
The minister also said that the impact of the disease has been larger in Punjab and Rajasthan than Haryana. The minister said that the number of affected cows in Haryana is less than 10,000 adding they also have reports of death of only 100 livestock in the state. Sirsa and Yamunanagar districts have been stated to be most affected because of the disease in the state.
Recently, during a meeting with the officers of Haryana, Purushottam Rupala said that vaccination should be first introduced in the districts where a large number of animals are suffering from lumpy skin disease so as to contain the immediate spread of this disease. He further said that the need of the hour was to isolate the animals suffering from this disease.
