Lumpy Skin Disease: How it spreads, Symptoms, Treatment and Vaccine

Lumpy Skin Disease: Lumpy Skin Disease is spreading rapidly among cattle. This prompted a massive effort to vaccinate cattle across eight states with the most cases of the disease. These states are Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu & Kashmir (UT). There are some stray cases in Andhra Pradesh and Andaman & Nicobar as well.

Lumpy Virus

Lumpy Skin disease is a contagious viral disease that spreads among cattle through mosquitoes, lice, flies, and wasps by direct contact, and also through contaminated water and food. There is no proof of transmission from cattle to humans.

Lumpy Skin Disease Symptoms

The symptoms of Lumpy Virus include high fever, skin nodules, reduced milk production, loss of appetite, watery eyes, increased nasal discharge, too much salivation, discharge of water from the eyes & nose, and nodules formation on the body.

Lumpy Skin Disease Vaccine

Jatindra Nath Swain, who is the Secretary of Animal Husbandry and Dairying Department said states are currently using the “goat pox” vaccine to control LSD (Lumpy Skin Disease) in cattle.

The commercial launch of a new vaccine named “Lumpi-ProVacInd” for Lumpy Skin Disease which is developed by two institutes of ICAR, will take the next 3-4 months, he said. Two companies are manufacturing this vaccine and they have the capacity to produce four crore doses per month.

The goat pox vaccine is sufficient to help Lumpy virus in areas where no case has been reported, doses of 3 ml each can be administered in cattle where an outbreak has been reported, he added.