Newcastle Disease (ND) is a deadly, contagious disease that kills many backyard poultry in South Asia and Africa. However, there is an inexpensive vaccine available to livestock keepers in South Asia and Africa.
GALVmed, the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines, and its various partners in South Asia and Africa work to raise awareness and usage of the Newcastle Disease vaccine among backyard poultry farmers.
GALVmed will hold a Newcastle Disease workshop on 12-14 March in New Delhi, India to review the different aspects of the ND projects and their impacts in Asia and Africa. Attendees will also visit a project in Mandu, Ramgadh in Jharkhand to see first-hand how vaccinations are done.
“GALVmed’s Newcastle Disease Workshop will allow us to learn from the past Newcastle Disease vaccine projects to draw the roadmap from Newcastle Disease control in the future,” said Peetambar Kushwaha, GALVmed Project Manager in South Asia.
The workshop is expected to create a clear understanding to enhance ND vaccination scale-up for the benefit of village poultry producers in Africa and to produce a clear indicator to measure the progress of the ND vaccination adoption.
“The workshop will provide a scope for cross learning of best practices from different projects and will guide us to a more efficient and innovative implementation in the future,” said Piyush Mishra, Project Coordinator of Bhodal Milk Producers Cooperative Society (BMPCS), an Orissa, India-based NGO that implements GALVmed’s ND control project in the field.
GALVmed’s Newcastle project in India has been running for several years and the NGO is currently partnered with Heifer International and SAMPARK in India to provide 145,000 households with the vaccine. The South Asia project uses the Thermostable Lasota vaccine, which was developed with collaboration from Hester Biosciences, an Indian company manufacturing animal vaccines and health products. GALVmed’s partnership with BMPCS has also provided livestock health care service to 60,000 poor livestock keepers and their families.
GALVmed’s Africa-based ND project has secured a manufacturing partner, MCI Santé Animale in Morocco, who will be producing the vaccine for African countries this year. The Africa project uses the thermostable I-2 vaccine and was developed in collaboration with Professor Philemon Wambura of Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. The vaccine will be available in the following countries in East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The vaccine is already being used in the following North, Central and West African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Niger and Senegal.
