Lumpy skin disease
Lumpy skin disease
- Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD), is a viral illness that causes prolonged morbidity in cattle and buffaloes.
- It appears as nodules of two to five centimetre diameter all over the body, particularly around the head, neck, limbs, udder and genitals.
- The lumps gradually open up like large and deep wounds.
- In some cases — under 10 per cent according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — the infected animal succumbs to the disease.
- While the LSD virus easily spreads by blood-sucking insects like mosquitoes, flies and ticks and through saliva and contaminated water and food.
- Veterinarians say no treatment is available for the disease, that is being reported for the first time in India.
- Historically, LSD has remained confined to Africa, where it was first discovered in 1929, and parts of West Asia.
- But in recent years, the disease has spread to territories beyond the endemic areas. In 2015, it made an incursion into the European part of Turkey and Greece.
- The next year, it created havoc in the Balkan and Caucasian countries and Russia. However, since its arrival in Bangladesh in July 2019, LSD is spreading across Asia in epidemic proportions.
- According to a risk assessment report by FAO, the disease spread to seven countries till the end of 2020 — reaching China and India in August 2019, Nepal in June 2020, Taiwan in July 2020, Bhutan and Vietnam in October 2020 and Hong Kong in November 2020.
- At least 23 countries in south Asia, east Asia and southeast Asia are now at risk of LSD, which is emerging as a trans-boundary animal disease.
Impact on India:
- In India, which has the world’s highest 303 million heads of cattle, the disease has spread to 15 states within just 16 months.
- In fact, in August 2019, when the first outbreak of LSD was reported from Odisha, five districts were grappling with the exotic cattle pox.
- Worse, studies suggest the virus could have already mutated in the country.
- Since LSD virus is related to sheep and goat pox, it can transmit to sheep and goats as well.
Unclear transmission
- Due to the infectious nature of LSD and its implications on the economy — decreased milk production, abortions and infertility and damaged hides due to cutaneous nodules and fibrous tissue growth cause significant economic losses to farmers — the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) declares it as a notifiable disease.
- This means a country must inform OIE about any outbreak of the disease so that it can be contained.
- Yet, no consolidated figure is available with the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD) regarding the actual spread of LSD in the country or economic losses incurred by farmers.
Measures taken:
- Veterinary hospitals have been directed to provide all the treatments for free.
- However, the challenge is no specific vaccine against LSD is available in India.
- Right now, the veterinanrians are following the protocols they would follow in case of a pandemic.
- Dairy farmers are advised to spray disinfectants in cattle-sheds several times a day to eradicate flies and mosquitoes that act as vectors of LSD.
- In case of death of an animal, farmers have been advised to bury the carcass deep inside the earth.
- But more than that, they have been advised to quarantine the cattle even at the slightest symptom of the disease.
- As of now, several states have authorised the use of goat pox vaccine for treating LSD as the virus is antigenically similar to sheep and goat pox.
This will have a devastating impact on the country, where most dairy farmers are either landless or marginal landholders and milk is among the cheapest protein source.
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