Lumpy Skin Disease Outbreak in India: Nearly 100,000 Cattles Died, 2 Million Sick

Approximately 100,000 cows and buffalos were killed due to a viral disease called lumpy skin disease. According to ABCNews, currently, there are over two million sickened.

Cow Animal Pasture Head Cattle Karsten Paulick/Pixabay

Lumpy Skin Disease

Insects that consume blood, such as ticks and mosquitoes, transmit the illness, also known as lumpy skin disease. Cows and buffalos with the infection experience fevers and skin tumors.

According to BBC, the disease is brought about by the Capripox virus, which has been dubbed "an emerging threat to livestock worldwide" by health collaboration Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. It is genetically related to the viruses that cause goat and sheep pox. According to experts, cows are likely to contract the disease more frequently than buffalos.

Dr. Ravi Israni, a top veterinary official in Rajasthan state, said that the illness results in lumps on the animal's body. When flies and mosquitoes rest on them, they spread the virus to other healthy animals. He adds that the outbreak might have gotten worse due to the monsoon season's torrential rainfall.

For many years, the illness was widespread in many African nations and has since spread to other regions of the globe. The disease initially surfaced in South Asia in July 2019, with Bangladesh reporting an outbreak. It was discovered in China and India, which have the greatest population of cows in the world, a month later.

Impact of Lumpy Skin Disease in the Country

According to a report by Associated Press, the virus has now spread to at least 15 states, and the number of cow and buffalo deaths has virtually doubled in the past three weeks.

According to Devinder Sharma, an agriculture policy expert in northern Chandigarh, small farmers are disproportionately affected by the cattle epidemic.

He added that the government statistics probably underestimated the actual number of deaths caused by the sickness. He said that it is a severe, serious issue that has been developing over the last couple of years.

Mass graves for cows now dot India's vast hinterland. In certain locations, animal carcasses rot in the open, and settlements are filled with the agonized cries of sick animals. The biggest effects were felt in the western state of Rajasthan, where 60,000 cattle died, and almost 1.4 million became unwell.

Director of the state of Rajasthan's Animal Husbandry Department Narendra Mohan Singh cautioned, "The disease is contagious and it is currently moving from the west to the east."

Distressed Cattle Owners

"Nearly 30-40 cows are dying every day," a distressed villager in Gujarat's Kutch district said. The sickness also affects hundreds of animals in the northern regions of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.

According to Anil Virani, who works in the animal husbandry department in Gujarat, they have seen that the goat pox vaccine protects against this illness and takes 15 to 20 days to take action.

Farmers in Gujarat and Rajasthan have complained that the state governments did not act quickly enough to stop the disease's spread.

However, administrative procedures in both states are now fully operational. According to Gujarat's agriculture minister Raghavji Patel, the state government has already immunized 300,000 cattle.