Vets just a call away for dairy farmers, even in remote areas

Dr Dyaneshwar Gavanhe, the veterinarian, had to spend around an hour to assist the animal in labour and successfully helped in the delivery of a calf. Without this timely intervention, Das admits, he would have lost the animal that he bought for Rs 80,000 and one that yields around 18 litres of milk per day. Das has five acres of land in the village of Murwada. He leases out the land and dairy is his main source of income. “In our remote area, access to animal healthcare is difficult, but this helpline is like a blessing for us.”

Animal husbandry, which was once thought to be a secondary income source for farmers has over time become the primary source of income for many farmers.

Like Das, there are many farmers for whom access to good quality animal healthcare is must to ensure they do not lose their cattle to diseases. Without access to proper healthcare for their animals, farmers are often at the mercy of untrained quacks.

Maha Pashudhan Sanjeevani, under the Mukhyamantri Pashu Swasthya Yojana, aims to address this by leveraging technology and making best usage of the available resources. The toll-free number 1962 is the front face of an integrated system, which uses artificial intelligence to map available healthcare professionals in the best possible way.

Housed within the office of the Commissionerate of Animal Husbandry, the project is a collaboration between the Bharat Financial Inclusion Limited (a wholly owned subsidiary of IndusInd Bank) and the state’s animal husbandry department. A formal MoU was signed in November 2020 and the project kicked off in May 2021. Under the project, the software, the hardware and manpower needed to run the call centre is provided by the former while the office and field staff is from the state government.

Dr Premnath Singh, senior lead manager of the project, said they aim to ensure that every farmer gets veterinary services right at his doorstep. The 15-seater call centres are managed by trained para-veterinarians. The software, developed by Singh and his team, has mapped 908 villages in 72 talukas in the state. Further, 3,566 doctors and paravets are also mapped under the scheme.

“The objective is simple: Instead of the farmer travelling to the veterinarians, we want it the other way round. Our role is to get the nearest available professional to attend the case. In this way, both save time and resources,” he said.

Once the farmer calls, the software immediately locates the nearest animal healthcare professional. The attending Customer Response Office (CRO) makes the initial inquiries and notes down the symptoms of the animals. “Our CROs are trained paravets so they can understand what is wrong with the animal and log in the details. An SMS is generated for the farmer and it contains the mobile number of the professional who is going to attend to the animal,” he said.

At the doctor’s end, the details collated by the CRO are shared along with the phone number and location of the farmer. Depending on the severity of the case, the doctor either travels on his bike or an ambulance.

The system also has a mechanism to collect feedback from the farmers at the end of the service.

Farmers make calls not only for emergencies but also to ask for artificial insemination and vaccination needs. Sachindra Pratap Singh, Commissioner (Animal Husbandry), said that till date, around 24,000 calls have been received and the CROs have made 18,000 outbound calls. More than half the inbound calls were for curative treatment, while over 8,000 calls were from farmers who wanted details about government schemes.

Dr Singh said 5 per cent of the inbound calls were of the “super critical” category and required attention within 5 hours as per the set protocols. “Thanks to the correct mapping of the doctors to the farmer there was not a single time when the set protocol was missed.”