JUST days ago, one of my cats was diagnosed with Feline Leukaemia Virus (FeLV), a retrovirus I knew little about until she suddenly developed fever, lethargy and loss of appetite. Although she was taken to a veterinary clinic as soon as she became ill, she was not tested until I specifically requested it, nor was she given proper supportive treatment her condition required. That negligence shortened a life already cut short by the virus itself. Just ten days after her first symptoms appeared, she died.
Only then did I begin to understand the devastating reality of FeLV. An infected cat can appear completely healthy for years while the virus lies dormant. Then, without warning, it can activate and destroy the immune system, leaving the animal vulnerable to severe anaemia, secondary infections and certain cancers. Worse, because the virus spreads through prolonged close contact, including saliva, mutual grooming and shared food or water bowls, infected cats often have to be permanently separated from the companions with whom they have formed lifelong bonds. Yet a vaccine exists that can protect uninfected cats and allow them to remain together. In Bangladesh, however, that protection is effectively unavailable because the vaccine is no longer being imported.
For many multi-cat households in Bangladesh, this dystopian nightmare is a literal reality. Unlike humans, you cannot explain to a grieving, sick animal why they can no longer groom or sleep next to their lifelong partner. Forcing total isolation on bonded cats triggers intense emotional trauma, causing a spiral of stress that actively weakens the immune systems of both the sick and the healthy.
The cruelty of this disease lies in its terrifying suddenness. You can be a responsible rescuer; your cat can live safely indoors for five years, thriving and loved. Then comes a routine bout of lethargy and fever. A blood draw reveals sudden, devastating anaemia or other symptoms. A rapid clinic test kit shows a positive strip.
In any developed veterinary infrastructure, the next steps are clear: test the rest of the household, vaccinate the negative cats and let them live their lives out together. But in Bangladesh, when you tell the clinic you will pay whatever it takes to import the vaccine to save your family, you are met with a devastating roadblock.
Corporate shield of bureaucracy
WHEN confronted by frantic pet owners, veterinary clinics often shrug, point a finger at the government, and blame a lack of market demand. But let us be clear: this is not a failure of individual empathy, nor is it a financial issue. Pet owners are willing to pay triple the price to save their animals. Instead, private clinics are actively using genuine bureaucratic red tape as a convenient shield to hide a total lack of commercial and institutional will.
The obstacle is not that FeLV vaccines are explicitly prohibited in Bangladesh. Under the existing regulatory framework, pharmaceutical companies can seek permission to import veterinary biologics by completing the required registration and approval process. The problem is that pharmaceutical importers and distributors have largely chosen not to pursue that route. Many veterinary suppliers appear to have adopted an internal policy of not importing specialised companion-animal vaccines because the market is considered ‘too small’, the regulatory process too burdensome and the commercial return too uncertain. Consequently, pet owners are denied access not because the law categorically forbids these vaccines, but because commercial convenience has prevailed over animal welfare.
The dual-regulatory cage managed by the Directorate General of Drug Administration and the Department of Livestock Services under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act is undeniably rigid. To legally import any live animal biologic, a commercial distributor must register a massive product dossier, clear bureaucratic field trials and secure a formal No Objection Certificate from the Department of Livestock Services. Yet, these very same FeLV vaccines were available in Bangladesh just a few years ago. For years, clinics and independent suppliers bypassed these massive commercial scales through informal channels, small-batch imports and specialised cold-chain courier transport.
But as customs enforcement at our airport tightened around unregistered biologics, the private veterinary sector sadly chose a path of lazy compliance. A veterinary clinic will not risk importing fifty or one hundred doses of an FeLV vaccine for its private clientele because a potential customs seizure represents a financial loss. Furthermore, because vaccines require a flawless, unbroken cold-chain storage, clinics refuse to invest the effort or the capital required to build secure, legitimate small-batch import pipelines. Rather than organising collectively as a professional veterinary association to lobby the Department of Livestock Services for legal, streamlined micro-import channels, high-end urban clinics have simply capitulated. They have prioritised high-turnover, low-effort commercial products like standard rabies or combined flue shots, completely abandoning niche biosecurity because it requires logistical effort. The current system doesn’t just block vaccines; it gives a free pass to treat animal welfare as a secondary concern while suffering zero legal liability for the lives lost as a result.
Livestock-only bias
THIS regulatory paralysis stems from a deeper, fundamental flaw: Bangladesh’s national veterinary policy remains frozen in a mid-20th-century agrarian mindset.
The state’s livestock infrastructure, such as the Livestock Research Institute, is heavily optimised around agricultural food security. The government rightfully spends billions to produce and import mass vaccines for foot-and-mouth disease, lumpy skin disease and poultry flu to protect rural economies and commercial livestock. However, this structure leaves a massive blind spot regarding companion animals.
Cats and dogs are legally and systematically sidelined as an urban luxury or an elite afterthought. While the global standard of veterinary public health recognises that urban companion animals require robust biosecurity frameworks, our policy architecture treats a house cat as non-essential fluff. When a disease like FeLV strikes a multi-cat home or a rescue shelter, the state offers zero legal avenue for protection, reducing the preventative science of the 2020s to a luxury we are banned from buying.
Call for regulatory reform
WE MUST stop treating companion animal health as a private luxury and recognise it for what it is: an exploding urban public health reality. To excuse clinics or distributors from their responsibility by blaming a rigid system is passive compliance. The system must be forced to change.
The Directorate General of Drug Administration and the Department of Livestock Services must create a fast-track compassionate import pathway. This requires a specific regulatory amendment allowing registered veterinary hospitals and clinics to apply for small-batch, emergency import permits for non-core companion animal vaccines such as FeLV without undergoing full commercial product registration.
The state must expand the national veterinary formulary. Policymakers must formally recognise companion animal biosecurity within the national health framework, granting specialised logistics and reduced customs barriers for life-saving small-animal biologics.
Private clinics and veterinary professionals must stop hiding behind bureaucratic excuses. The private veterinary sector must form a collective oversight body and actively use its institutional weight to secure legal, cold-chain-compliant import pipelines for specialised biologics.
To every pet owner, independent rescuer and animal lover reading this: look at the companion sleeping peacefully at your feet. They are safe today. But without structural reform, a single scratch, a shared water bowl, or a dormant gene could change everything tomorrow. If your home becomes the next multi-cat household to face an avoidable, state-enforced death sentence, you will be consumed by the same agonising tension I am enduring right now — trapped in a nightmare where you are constantly terrified for the lives of your other healthy cats, all while witnessing one cat’s death and watching another one fight for life. It is then that you will ask the exact same question I am asking today: What if you’re next?
Rafia Tamanna is an editorial assistant at New Age.
