Warning sign

Spread of lumpy skin disease must be contained

With over 10,000 cases of lumpy skin disease (LSD) infecting cattle being reported in May from different states, the resurgence of this highly infectious ailment bodes ill for the dairy sector, which has emerged as the backbone of India’s rural economy. Last year, the disease had caused over 155,000 deaths and a sharp dip in the milk yield of countless other affected bovines. The consequential squeeze on the supplies of milk and various milk products had forced dairy companies, including the market leaders like Amul and Mother Dairy, to raise milk prices multiple times. This year, the situation might get worse if speedy pre-emptive action fails to come forth. For, while last year, the disease was confined largely to Rajasthan and its adjoining region, this time, cases have already been reported from nearly a dozen states spread across the country — from Uttarakhand in the north to Maharashtra and Karnataka in the south, and Sikkim in the east. Uttarakhand alone has recorded over 6,500 confirmed cases of this virus. With the monsoon season round the corner, the danger of its assuming an epidemic form has heightened because mosquitoes, flies and other biting insects, which spread this vector-borne infection, tend to multiply faster during the hot and humid weather.

The disease, spotted for the first time in India, in Odisha, in September 2019, causes fever and blister-like nodules on the skin of the affected animals. It lessens their capacity to produce milk, and kills some of them, especially those suffering from co-morbidity. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reckons the mortality rate of this virus at around 10 per cent. Given that a vast majority of small and mar­ginal farmers, and landless people, who constitute over 85 per cent of the rural population in India, rely critically on animal husbandry for their livelihood, the socio-economic fallout of the outbreak of this disease is bound to be horrendous. Overall, the country’s livestock sector has maintained a robust compound annual growth rate of close to 8 per cent in recent years. Its share in agricultural gross value added (GVA) at constant prices was 30.1 per cent in 2020-21. Milk is now virtually the largest food crop, outstripping rice and wheat in terms of both volume and value.

Unfortunately, no proven cure for this virus has yet been found. Veterinarians tend to use antibiotics, which prove mostly ineffective unless chosen meticulously, conforming precisely to the symptoms. Vaccination, practically, is the only way to deal with it. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) had evolved last year a vaccine for lumpy skin disease, named “Lumpy-ProVacInd”, which is similar to the attenuated vaccines used against tuberculosis, measles, mumps, and rubella. However, its commercial production remains mired in regulatory and other hurdles despite at least four companies having acquired the needed technical know-how from the ICAR. Currently, mostly goat- and sheep-pox vaccines are being administered to bigger bovines as well. Their efficacy rate against lumpy skin disease is said to be 60-70 per cent. What is needed, therefore, is to show the same kind of urgency in approval, mass production, and use of the vaccine for containing lumpy skin disease as was displayed in the case of Covid-19. Otherwise, the sustainability of the country’s white revolution would be at stake.