Discrepancies in govt report on lumpy skin disease deaths

Context: A Parliamentary Standing Committee is involved about the accuracy of statistics on livestock deaths from Lumpy Skin Disease. They observed a distinction between the statistics given by the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying and what is truly happening, suggesting that the stated numbers won’t be proper.

Details about the news:

• The Standing Committee on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing presented its report titled ‘Spread of Lumpy Skin Disease in Cattle inside the Country and Issues Related There-with’ in the Lok Sabha
• The document mentioned that the  U.S.A. Faced a devastating outbreak of the LSD in 2021-22 ensuing in massive scale death and emaciation of cattle.
• India battled the devastating LSD outbreak among livestock in 2021-22, hurting milk production and farm income.
• However, as in line with the file, there has been an opening in information relating to the range of livestock affected and dead as supplied by the Department and the actual ground realities.
• The Committee also recommends the department to make comprehensive efforts to:
• ramp up sickness surveillance, remedy and diagnostic infrastructure,
• improve veterinary offerings,
• build ability of animal fitness experts, and so forth. To address animal pandemic in a holistic way in destiny.

About Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD):

• LSD is because of the lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) of the capripoxvirus genus in the poxviridae family.
• Sheep-pox virus and goat-pox virus are the opposite participants of this genus.
• The LSDV especially influences farm animals — cows and its progeny, and the Asian water buffaloes.
• According to a 2021 report of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, LSD outbreaks arise in epidemics several years apart.
• As in step with the document, the lifestyles of a selected reservoir for the virus isn’t recognised, neither is it referred to as to how and wherein the virus survives among epidemics

Symptoms of LSD

• LSDV assaults the circulatory system of an animal and causes inflammation of blood vessels and lesions in numerous organs like liver, lungs, spleen, lymph nodes and so forth.
• In turn, it causes dermis, making the outer surface of the pores and skin to get separated from dermis – the inner layer of the pores and skin.
• This, in flip, ends in formation of lumps or nodules on an animal’s frame. Fever, accelerated mucus secretion, loss of urge for food etc are amongst different symptoms.

How disease is spread ?

• The LSDV spreads via blood-sucking vectors like ticks and mites like houseflies, mosquitoes, and so forth.
• It additionally spreads through infected water, fodder and feed.
• Scientists were advising isolation of infected animals from the wholesome ones in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus.
• However, there may be a problem of feral livestock in India and scientists say these free-ranging farm animals can also be a cause for fast spread of LSD.

Occurrence of Lumpy skin disease worldwide:

• Based on the FAO file, the presence of LSD began with being confined to sub-Saharan Africa, however in recent years, its attainment has accelerated to embody the Middle East and Turkey. 
• This tremendous enlargement of LSD’s geographical influence started out around 2015, as it started to have an effect on countries inside the Balkan place of southeastern Europe, the Caucasus vicinity of eastern Europe, or even Russia.

Occurrence of Lumpy skin disease In India

• LSD was introduced to India, Bangladesh, and China in July 2019, and since then, there have been outbreaks of the disease in 20 Indian states. 
• These states include Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. As of October 30, a total of 287,000 animals were affected by the disease in India, and 22,313 of them died in 2023.

Source: Indian Express

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