A first, combined vaccine for cattle

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 3

Haryana has become the first state in the country to introduce Raksha Biovac, a combined vaccine to immunise cattle against Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and Haemorrhagic Septicaemia (HS). It has passed the “challenge test” too.

The state has covered about 60 lakh cattle twice for two doses across all 22 districts of the state. Under the “challenge test” recently, which took place in the presence of experts from a central government institute, the combined vaccine was tested in a group of cattle having both vaccinated and those without vaccine.

They were administered live virus of FMD. Those who were vaccinated showed immunity towards the disease and confirmed the effectiveness of the combined vaccine.

Earlier, the department used to vaccinate animals four times in a year — two times for the prevention of FMD and two times for HS.

It used to lead to great stress to animals while involving higher cost and manpower, and acceptability issues among farmers.

The central government had given the combined vaccine project to the Animal Husbandry Department of Haryana as a pilot project which started in April.

“No other state in the country has been using the combined vaccine as of now. Our success can be replicated in other states now,” said Additional Chief Secretary Animal Husbandry Sunil Kumar Gulati.

He added, “Also, Haryana has started ‘Sheetal Teeka’, a cloud-based system. It has probes in every cold chamber at the block-level that helps to keep track of the storage temperature, which has to be kept in the prescribed range (2°C to 8°C), through the web so that the vaccine doesn’t get spoilt.”

To introduce the combined vaccine, the department formed state-level, divisional-level and district-level monitoring committees of officers and scientists from Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (LUVAS), Hisar, for the implementation of the campaign.

The vaccination teams went door to door for inoculation of all the cattle above the age of four months.