Letter No. 347—IV-58 dated the 16th October 1928, from U CHIT MAUNG (2), B.A.,
A.T.M., Secretary to the Financial Commissioner (Transferred Subjects), Burma
to the Secretary to the Government of Burma, Forest Department.
SUBJECT.—Annual Report of the Civil Veterinary Department for the year
ending the 31st March 1928.
I am directed to submit the Annual Report of the Civil Veterinary
Department for the year ending the 31st March 1928. Mr. McKerral
has written an interesting and comprehensive report and mentions
important plans for making the Department more effective without
greatly increasing its cost.
2. It is hoped that proposals will soon be submitted to Government
for settling in a more satisfactory way the responsibilities of district
officers, Local Government authorities and the department in respect of
reporting outbreaks of contagious disease and mortality returns, the
treatment of contagious diseases and the treatment of wounds and such
other veterinary services as can be rendered at dispensaries.
3. The department with the assistance of Mr. Mitchell, M.R.C.V.S.,
the officer whose services have been obtained temporarily from South
Africa, is elaborating plans for adopting the serum cum virus (alias
serum-simultaneous) method of inoculation against rinderpest mentioned
in paragraph 15 of the report. It is not impossible to exterminate
rinderpest throughout the province, and, whatever the difficulties may
be, it is reasonable for the department to keep that object in view.
This method of inoculation, however, is estimated to cost about
Rs. 1-14-0 per head on account of the serum and virus used and the
complete inoculation of all the six million cattle in the province would
cost approximately Rs. 120 lakhs for serum and virus without reckoning
the cost of the establishment, and it might be better to submit to the
loss of forty thousand head of cattle a year, which at an average of Rs.
50 per head would take six years to reach the cost of the general inocu-
lation. It is necessary therefore to examine the possibility of reducing
the cost, and the Financial Commissioner understands that this is being
done by the Department. But even if the cost can be reduced, there
is little prospect of the money being available from Provincial revenues.
The possibility of raising the necessary money by charging the owners
of the cattle must be examined likewise with care. Where rinderpest
is prevalent, it is said that a bullock, which has had the disease and has
recovered, is worth some ten rupees more than a bullock which has not
obtained immunity in this way.
Where the disease has been unknown
for many years, as in the case of the dry zone districts, the cattle owners
probably are not aware of the risk to which this long freedom from the
disease exposes them of another devastating outbreak such as that which
occurred in that area in 1906-07. Where there is not such fear, some
people will no doubt take the view mentioned in the letter forwarding
the previous year's report that the apathy of the public " will only
disappear slowly in the course of generations with the gradual spread
of education and the development of civic spirit."
4. The department at any rate, the Financial Commissioner under-
stands, does not despair and intends to set about systematically trying
to prepare the way for defeating the disease by popularising the