October 21, 2019

Indian council develops diagnostic kits for Japanese encephalitis, bluetongue disease

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) told the Press Trust of India last week that it has developed diagnostic kits to detect and control Japanese encephalitis and bluetongue diseases.

Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus spreads from swine to humans and there have been several cases of a large number of child fatalities.

The Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), under ICAR, developed the kits, the latter's Director General (DG) Trilochan Mohapatra said at the sidelines of a conference.

Speaking on the JE ELISA kit for swine, he said JE is a re-emerging viral zoonotic disease leading to child fatalities every year in the country.

"India is importing one diagnostic kit for this virus at Rs 1,200-1500. Now, ICAR-IVRI have developed this kit for just Rs 180-200 (Rs 1=US$0.014)," he said.

The government and ICAR would now work towards making this kit available in village and block levels, Mohapatra added.

Talking about the second kit to diagnose bluetongue, Mohapatra said: "We are the first country in the world to develop a diagnostic kit for bluetongue disease," adding that it can also provide export opportunities in the long term.