Spatial Mapping of Foot and Mouth Disease in Karnataka Using GIS, Remote Sensing, and Novel Statistical Models

Abstract

Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious viral disease of domestic and wild cloven-hoofed animals, including cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, pigs, water buffalo, and wild species (OIE, 2012). The disease was caused by Foot and Mouth Virus (FMDV) belonging to the family Picornaviridae and genus Aphthovirus (Belsham, 1993). The virus has seven serotypes. The existing serotypes are O, A, Asia-1, South Africa territory-1(SAT-1), SAT-2, SAT-3, and C (Domingo et al., 2003). The main clinical symptoms of FMD are high fever (104-1050 F), salivation, and a significant drop in milk production. The other clinical signs observed due to FMD are painful blisters/ vesicles on the tongue, lips and other tissues of the mouth, udder, teats, and interdigital space of feet (Alexandersen et al., 2003). There is also weight loss, loss of appetite, quivering lips and frothing of mouth, cows may develop blisters on teats and lameness in several animals. Occasionally, FMD can also infect humans (Bauer, 1997). The disease can cause significant socioeconomic losses (Thompson et al., 2002). The direct economic losses due to FMD in India were estimated to be Rs. 200 Billion (Venkataramanan et al., 2005). The projected annual direct loss from FMD in India is Rs. 20,000 crores (Pattnaik et al., 2012b). The mean total loss per animal varied between local and upgraded buffaloes, averaging 440 $ and 513 $, respectively (Govindaraj et al., 2017). Prevention and control of FMD is highly important in protecting the livestock industry and improving the livelihoods of animal-rearing farmers in developing countries where FMD is highly endemic. Currently, there is control program for FMD in India. The success of the disease control program depends on understanding the epidemiology of the disease, especially the spatial analysis of the disease pattern and spread (Bhattacharya et al., 2005). In this thesis it was aimed to identify spatial risk factors, household level risk factors in occurrence of FMD in Karnataka, Further, it was aimed to develop risk map for the disease for planning effective prevention and control strategies. Finally, to make serotype distribution map for the Karnataka state. There are five chapters in this thesis.