What is Lumpy Skin Disease? Although Shahbaz Rasool managed to get all 40 of his cows immunised against the rapidly spreading Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) in time, the threat still exists. The dairy farmer from Gujarat said, “I won’t know for sure until 28 days have passed if they are safe.”
He made the decision to purchase the imported vaccine that is sold in the market rather than wait for the government to vaccinate his animals. 1ml is required for each head, and a 100ml bottle costs Rs44,000 in India. He spent Rs. 17,600 on vaccines for his 40 cows.
According to the Pakistan Economic Survey, livestock was the largest sub-sector of agriculture and contributed 60.1 percent to the value addition of agriculture and 11.5 percent to the GDP during the 2020–21 fiscal year.
One of the eight million families who work with cattle is Rasool’s.
30,691 tonnes of the 63,684 tonnes of milk produced in 2021 (including goat and camel milk) and 18,686 tonnes of it came from cows, with Punjab taking care of up to 90% of the nation’s milk needs.
Rasool, who considers himself a little farmer and has a few dozen cows and buffaloes (small farmers are those with up to at most 50 livestock) remarked that the majority of Pakistanis consume buffalo milk, or at least believe they do.
According to Shakir Umer Gujjar, president of Pakistan’s largest dairy farmer organisation, the Dairy and Cattle Farmers’ Association (DCFA), 30% of cow milk is combined with buffalo milk and sold in stores there.
Rasool, the chief organiser of DCFA in Punjab, thinks that the LSD expanded to the region after infecting all 36 districts in Sindh.
What is Lumpy Skin Disease
The transboundary, vector-borne disease that affects cattle and water buffaloes and is predominantly spread by biting insects like ticks and mosquitoes was first identified in livestock in Zambia in 1929.
According to Dr. Tahir Yaqub, spokesman for the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) in Lahore, the disease is 100 percent non-zoonotic and results in “high temperature, severe discomfort, and loss of milk production” in the cow.
“The nodes developed on the body look rather unsightly, and may carry pus in them if there is bacterial infection.” However, he said, it was fine to consume meat and milk of an infected animal if the former is cooked well and the latter “pasteurised properly”.
An infected female cow’s reproductive systems suffer severe damage, according to Dr. Zaka Ullah Pathan, a veterinarian in Khairpur, Sindh. Additionally, a cow whose usual daily milk production may have been eight litres may now only produce about 1.5 litres. He forewarned that as the cow population declines, we would suffer a great loss in the future.
Doomsday scenario
Rasool is concerned that the disease may wipe out the livestock if it is not contained, killing off many small dairy producers like him. According to the Ministry of National Food Security & Research, Pakistan has about 51 million cattle and 42 million buffalo.
Gujjar claimed that when the illness spread and people in Karachi learned about LSD, they ceased purchasing milk from the milk stores. Because of this, farmers in Karachi were unable to sell even 20% of the milk that their animals produced.
The milk was initially going bad until they made the decision to sell it to large corporations. “Even though the pre-LSD pricing were Rs 4,780 for 40 litres, they started buying truckloads of our milk for as little as Rs 800 for 40 litres, “Gujjar stated. “The same milk was later repackaged and marketed by the large corporations as their own, but even so, we were grateful since otherwise, we would have just thrown it away, he continued.
The blame game
Before the disease was first reported in Pakistan in November 2021 from Bahawalpur in Punjab, it had already afflicted animals in India and Iran. Dr. Nazeer Hussain Kalhoro, general manager of the Sindh Institute of Animal Health, which is overseen by the province government’s livestock department, speculated that since animals frequently cross borders, they may have come from India, where the disease was already prevalent.
On the other side, Dr. Yaqub thinks the sickness might have originated from the imported livestock that arrived at the Karachi port last year. Dr. Pathan, a dairy farmer who owns 50 cows, 20 of which have the disease, stated that “shipments with cattle come every three to four months and they are allowed to be transported without evaluating their health.”
Gujjar, for his part, supported Kalhoro’s claim that the first case to be documented originated in Punjab and that the illness then spread to Karachi, a port city where extensive commercial farming is performed. However, he claimed that the authorities “refused to acknowledge the sickness or take immediate action to contain it.”
“After writing to the provincial chief secretaries, livestock departments, even the prime minister and as a last resort sending press releases to the media, the government finally took action, but the damage had already been done. Why didn’t they listen to us in time?” questioned an angry Gujjar, demanding an “inquiry against the bureaucrats for their criminal negligence when they knew everything”.
For example, he said, “the first vaccines to arrive in the country were kept at the cold storage at Karachi airport for a month before they were allowed to be used,” he claimed. Even now, the task force set up by the Ministry of National Food Security and Research to combat LSD lacks representation of any genuine stakeholders, said Gujjar — a fact that he has pointed out to the prime minister in another letter.
Gujjar has also caused resentment among the meat and milk vendors for bringing the sickness to the government’s attention, which caused them to suffer significant losses when consumers ceased purchasing meat and milk. They keep threatening me with terrible outcomes, he added.
The sickness would have wiped out the entire herd of cattle if I hadn’t made this much noise, but it has now been contained, at least in Sindh. He did, however, forecast that, like with foot and mouth disease, which is still a problem for cattle, dairy farmers would experience the effects of this disease for a “very long period.”
While this was going on, the Sindh government released itself from all responsibility, claiming that it had alerted the federal government as soon as it learned about it in November. Dr. Kalhoro added, “We even submitted samples to the National Veterinary Laboratory in Islamabad.” It took them until March 4 to properly confirm and announce the condition, he continued.
According to data gathered by the Directorate-General of the Livestock Department, the vaccine had been imported from Turkey by April 4 and over 2.8 million of the province’s total 11.39 million cattle had already received the shot. According to the same information, the virus has infected nearly 53,000 cattle, of which 571 have perished.
Additionally, according to Dr. Kalhoro, the institute is internally developing LSD vaccinations that should be available by December. When our vaccine is complete, it won’t cost more than Rs25, he claimed, “or even less.” Currently, it costs us Rs250 to vaccinate one animal using an imported vaccine.
Punjabi farmers, meanwhile, have not had the same luck. Dr. Pathan claims that the sheep and goat pox vaccine, which Dr. Yaqub claims is only “50% effective,” has only been administered to fewer than 10% of Punjab’s livestock population. He stated that the imported vaccines had not yet been acquired by the Punjab government.
The director general of research for the Punjab Livestock Department, Dr. Abdul Rehman, revealed that approximately 10% of the entire population had received the locally made goat pox vaccines. However, he claimed that the vaccine’s effectiveness against LSD was between 70 and 80 percent. It is also made locally and just costs Rs. 10, he added.
Dr. Rehman claims that soon after the initial few instances were recorded from Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan in March of this year, the livestock department created a backup plan. A core group of top officials were tasked with monitoring the situation and managing the activities of a 24-hour LSD cell that had been built up for the purpose as part of the plan. Additionally, a toll-free number, 080009211, was set up just for reporting LSD cases.
Additionally, the livestock division created the ADRS Farmer app, which allows farmers to record LSD incidents among other things. “At least 2,500 farmers and another 2,000 para-veterinary workers had registered themselves on the app,” claimed Dr. Rehman, who also mentioned that 1,000 veterinarians had enrolled on another app called ADRS RO.
He added that when a case is reported on the app or by phone, a crew is instantly dispatched to the GPS location and it vaccinates all livestock within a 3-kilometer radius. “We are basically encouraging farmers to report incidents,” he said. Additionally, he added, “we are attempting to stop the virus from spreading through anti-bug spray efforts.
According to Dr. Rehman, the livestock department has established checkpoints at all significant interprovincial and interdistrict thoroughfares to guarantee that the animals being moved are sprayed. Nearly 190 of the over 300 livestock markets in Punjab that have been set up especially for Eidul Azha are also participating in these spraying activities.
Dr. Rehman believes that the fact that just 48 of the 10,000 sick cattle have perished so far indicates the effectiveness of their efforts. According to him, the mortality rate from the virus is 1-2 percent worldwide, but only 0.48 percent in Punjab. “When an infected animal is reported, we offer it with symptomatic therapy till it has recovered,” he said.
Super spreaders
Gujjar forewarned that cattle markets put up across the nation in preparation for Eidul Azha would probably turn out to be extremely popular gatherings. At the main market off the Super Highway in Karachi, the provincial livestock department has dispatched veterinarian physicians and employees to inspect cattle being brought in and make sure no livestock afflicted by the virus finds its way to the stalls.
Pathan worries that a second wave of the disease could hit Sindh, which has so far managed to contain it to some extent. This is because animals are bought and sold at these marketplaces. Rasool explained that Punjabi farmers frequently transport their most prized livestock to Karachi for sale since it has a sizable livestock market and offers decent prices.
According to Asif Ali Syed, a representative for the Karachi Cattle Market, “We are inspecting animals in every truck that arrives at the market in the marshalling area.” Without a vaccination certificate, he continued, “No animal is allowed to reach the market.” 13 lorries that had brought in animals without the certificates have so far been returned by the government.
He stated that the certificate is also examined at one of the numerous checkpoints placed along the route from Punjab to Karachi. Gujjar, however, claimed that the Punjabi certificates offered no assurance because they were granted in opposition to the delivery of goat-pox vaccines, whose effectiveness against LSD was minimal.
Furthermore, the smaller market in Malir paints a very different picture from the market situated along the Super Highway, where rigorous regulations were in force. Several animals were discovered to have the pus-filled nodes that are indicative of the illness during a recent inspection of the Malir market. When the traffickers were questioned about them, they gave the excuse that the animals with obvious symptoms had been taken out of the group.
Gujjar dismissed this defence once more. “This virus is spread by flies, mosquitoes, and water. There is a very significant possibility that all of the animals are infected if one of them is “said he.
Dr. Yaqub claims that after the initial infection, the animal needs about seven days to start showing symptoms of the virus. He added that although the boils may result in long-lasting abrasions on the body, they begin to show after about 10 days and that it takes the animal about 15-20 days to recover.
Gujjar advised everyone to wait until two days before Eidul Azha to buy animals for the occasion. In this manner, even though the animal may have been infected, the viral load would be low and have no impact on the animal’s health at the time of slaughter.
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