India should build a National Livestock Disease Intelligence Hub to strengthen surveillance, early warning and preparedness for animal diseases, Dr M. L. Jat, Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), said during his first visit to the ICAR-National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics (NIVEDI) in Bengaluru, ICAR reported.
Jat laid the foundation stone of a Livestock Disease Training Laboratory being set up under the INLEAD programme. The facility is meant to train staff in veterinary epidemiology, disease informatics, modelling and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to turn data into usable disease intelligence. He promised ICAR support for the infrastructure and scientific capacity the hub would need.
NIVEDI director Dr Baldev R. Gulati described the institute's part in eradicating rinderpest from India and its continuing support, through surveillance, sampling and serological monitoring, for national control programmes against foot-and-mouth disease, peste des petits ruminants, classical swine fever and brucellosis. He also presented the National Animal Disease Referral Expert System (NADRES), which forecasts district-level risk of 15 livestock diseases two months ahead.
Jat asked for forecasts to be rigorously validated and for sentinel surveillance sites in every state to catch priority diseases early. He also proposed linking animal production and nutrition data with disease surveillance, working with other ICAR institutes such as NIANP and NDRI, to understand how health, productivity and disease risk relate.
During the visit he toured the institute's World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) reference laboratory for PPR, its disease informatics unit and its NaaViC agribusiness incubation centre.
Photo: Aruna at Malayalam Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: ICAR
Comments
(0)