Porcine Babesiosis and its Therapeutic Management

Comparatively, pig is a clean and safe food animal. It suffers from countable diseases on finger tips & tailor made professional advise to combat prevalent pathogens are available. Encouraged from these merits in Oct., 2006, a small, Yorkshire pig unit of 12 was brought up at Jaipur (Rajasthan). It has now multiplied to 88 pigs of either sex in different age groups. Animals were stall fed and maintained indoor on kitchen waste fortified with grower diet, with overall metabolizing energy (ME) 8600 k cal/kg. In June, 2008; a gilt, aged eight months, exhibited pathognomic clinical signs of Porcine babesiosis. The disease was therapeutically managed with Nilbery (A brand of Intas) at dose rate of 3.5 mg/kg administered intramuscularly. The diseased gilt responded remarkably, with disappearance of characteristic signs within 12-48h of specific treatment. Evidently the Diminazine diaceturate & Phenazone had synergistic effect in eliminating the piroplasms from the circulation. The origin, transmission, possibilities of acquiring Babesia spp, their poor host specificity and future prospects of pork production in India, as rural based public and/or private sector endeavour have been discussed.