Livestock farms owners complain low quality veterinary drugs

Herat CITY (Pajhwok): Some livestock farm owners in western Herat province have complained against the non-availability of quality veterinary drugs especially for dairy cattle and said many livestock are lost due to this problem.

They said the non-availability of quality veterinary drugs threatened their hundreds and thousands of investment in this cattle forming.

Saleem Shah Halimi, one of the cattle farm owners, said from the past few years he invested in livestock farming but now half of his investment had been lost because of diseases that affect animals every year and resulted in the loss of animals.

He told Pajhwok Afghan News: “Livestock owners suffered losses this year, including myself, due to low quality medicines and there is no livestock laboratory facility nationwide so farmers had to send the animals blood sample to Iran or Pakistan, on its way the blood sample did not remain fresh and lost its condition which affect the result.”

He said a large quantity of low quality drugs were available in the market which added to their problems.

He explained in the past a cow recovered from disease by injecting two CC vaccine but now a cow could now recover by injected 5 CC vaccine.

Sufi Ghulam Mohammad, another cattle farm owner, said there are five types of vaccines for animals but his cattle received two types of vaccine which had no impact.

He asked the government to support livestock farmers in the province and monitor available vaccine and drugs in the market.

Sayed Masoum Sadaat, an official of the Agriculture Department, acknowledged the problems faced by cattle farms owners and said unfortunately low quality veterinary drugs were available in the market and collected on daily bases by technical teams of the Agriculture Department.

He said the Agriculture Department distributed more than two hundred thousand doses of vaccine have been implemented in Herat, which is related to the skin abnormality of animals, especially cows

Skin abnormality disease is a viral disease that is transmitted directly and indirectly to animals and infects the skin, which currently causes about 30% of deaths in the mainly in cattle.

Saadat said this disease is mostly among cattle and they have implemented two rounds of vaccination of this disease in all districts of Herat in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

According to the information around 183,000 cattles had been vaccinated in Herat province so far.

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