Relevance: Prelims/mains: G.S paper II: Health
Why in news?
- Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) and Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR and Secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD), released the Live attenuated Classical Swine Fever Vaccine (IVRI-CSF-BS) Technology developed by ICAR -Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Izatnagar.
About:
- CSF is one of the most important diseases of pigs causing high mortality with annual loss of approx. Rs.4.299 billion.
- A lapinized CSF vaccine (Weybridge strain, UK) is being used in India since 1964 for controlling the disease.The vaccine is produced by sacrificing large numbers of rabbits for each batch.
- The country’s total requirements is 22 million doses per year and hardly 1.2 million doses are produced per year by the lapinized vaccine, as only 50 doses are produced from a single rabbit spleen.
- In order to do away sacrificing of rabbits and increase the productivity, IVRI had earlier developed a cell culture CSF vaccine by adapting the lapinized vaccine virus in cell culture.
Key facts:
- The new vaccine is ready for release and commercial production will be completed in less than a year.
- The vaccine would be the best choice for use in the CSF Control Programme (CSF-CP) already launched by DAHD (CSF-CP).
- The new vaccine will be part of the Government’s One Health Initiative.
- The vaccine is safe, potent, does not revert to virulence and provide protective immunity from day 14 of the vaccination till 24 months studied so far.
- The vaccine has been tested on around 500 pigs at multiple locations.