EXPERTS at a seminar at Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Mymensingh identified lack of effective vaccination and trained manpower is killing thousands of livestock and poultry animals each year, reports a national daily on Monday. Reviewing the outcome of a study on nine villages in Rangpur, Netrakona and Satkhira, they highlighted that diseases are the main killer of livestock, accounting for 67 percent of the deaths of cattle, buffaloes, goats and sheep and 79 percent of chicken and ducks every year. It showed a glimpse of the problem and it is enough for the policymakers to line up plan of action accordingly.
The situation is especially alarming because livestock is one of the most-important sub-sectors in agriculture, contributing 1.78 percent to the country’s overall gross domestic product and 11 percent to agricultural GDP. It creates 20 percent direct and 50 percent indirect employment while accounting for 4.31 percent of total exports.
Chairman of the Department of Agricultural Finance at BAU rightly emphasized in the seminar that preventing death of livestock and poultry animals is crucial for the country as it falls far short of meeting the demand for protein. He mainly blamed the lack of availability of vaccine saying only 10 percent of it is locally produced and the ratio of a qualified veterinarian to animals is 1:170,000. More than 60 percent farmers said there is shortage of effective vaccines, because even after using imported vaccine, their animals die.
Their recommendations that the government should empower and provide more funds to the Department of Livestock Services to produce more vaccines locally to prevent death of cattle and poultry is a timely recommendation to address the problem. An expert even opposed the import of vaccines saying their quality is not good and they fail to prove effective. The scarcity of field-level manpower, poor quality of service and vaccine and weak transport system to reach the services to the doorsteps are the major bottlenecks and these must be addressed immediately.
The lack of government initiative has become a pressing concern for all working in the livestock and agriculture sector. They voiced skeptical to maintaining unproductive relations with some countries to get poor quality vaccines; it is not the right answer. They held the view that the government must work on creating its own facilities to produce vaccines locally so that poor farmers have more access to them at low cost.
Policy improvements and its enforcement is definitely necessary and in our view incentives must be given to private companies to locally produce and provide vaccines to farmers. The government must also work at the same time to create awareness among farmers of all regions how to face livestock diseases at initial stage. Moreover, without skilled manpower saving our endangered livestock is getting only riskier and the government must take steps quickly in this regard.
