Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh launched Livestock Disease Forewarning –Mobile Application (LDF-Mobile App), developed by ICAR-National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics (ICAR-NIVEDI), Bengaluru, in New Delhi. At the launch, Union Agriculture Minister informed that dreaded Rinderpest disease has been eradicated from India and stressed that similar efforts are needed to control and eradicate diseases like FMD, PPR, Brucellosis, CSF, BT, HS etc., which cause huge economic loss annually to the livestock rearers and livestock industry as a whole.
Union Agriculture Minister said that ICAR-NIVEDI has identified 13 priority diseases based on their past incidence patterns and has built a strong database of these diseases and has been providing monthly livestock disease alerts to the state and central animal husbandry departments.
Shri Singh said that to widen its reach, ICAR-NIVEDI developed the app and used Monthly Bulletin system to send out early warning. Shri Singh said the complex statistical algorithm also considers both climatic and non-climatic factors and categorizes districts into Very High Risk, High Risk, Moderate Risk, Low Risk, Very Low Risk and No Risk for a particular disease so that stakeholders can effectively plan and utilize the available resources.
Apart from early warning, the app will also provide information about clinical samples for the diagnosis in case of the epidemic so that immediate action in case of the epidemic. This app works on all kind of Android smartphones and takes up 2.5 MB space. He said that hopefully, this app will be beneficial for the consumers and stakeholders engaged in disease control programmes.