In 2024, more than 542 thousand reindeer were vaccinated in Yamal, and this is a record for the last 8 years. The number of vaccinated animals is just over 86% of the total number of reindeer in the region—there are about 630 thousand of them. For six months, 20 teams travelled across the tundra, organising corrals for horned animals from private farms and brigades. Of course, it was not without the help of local residents—about 100 tundra dwellers actively assisted veterinarians.

A total of 2,177 samples for various diseases were collected during the field season, 40,000 brucellosis tests were conducted, and 98,000 animals were fitted with RFID tags. In addition, doctors treated 7.6 thousand reindeer-herding dogs against helminths—the four-legged helpers of herders were also under the supervision of specialised agencies. Since this year, their treatment against parasites has been included in the state task. In addition, about 900 kits were distributed to private reindeer herders to vaccinate their herds themselves. Scheduled vaccination of reindeer herds is carried out in all Arctic regions of Russia.

The state's efforts to create a system that would allow for 100% vaccination of the domestic reindeer population began in the last century. Paradoxically, it is one of the cornerstones of preserving the traditional way of life for tundra nomads while respecting their rights as citizens of our country. That said, the issue regularly comes up—the activity is expensive, labour-intensive and time-consuming, not least because of the need to get to hard-to-reach parts of the tundra. Instead of chasing nomads all over the tundra, it is much easier to treat herds in one place.

The history of deer vaccination dates back to the 1920s. In 1924, the Committee for Assistance to the Nationalities of the Northern Suburbs was established, and in 1925, the training of specialists who were to help the representatives of the indigenous peoples to become full-fledged members of the emerging socialist society began. Disease control became an issue at this time—they regularly mowed down the reindeer herds, which are the basis of reindeer herders' livelihoods.  

Between 1886 and 1917, anthrax killed 1.14 mn animals in the Bolshezemelskaya and Malozemelskaya tundras (NAA and Komi Republic) alone. The consequence was starvation and human deaths.

Specialists from northern research institutes got to work—they came up with a vaccine, special corrals for medical procedures, and organised an annual vaccination campaign. As a result, there have been no mass anthrax outbreaks since the 1930s. It is true that in 1931–1933, the herds were significantly thinned out by Pallas's sand grouse and lung diseases in the Seyaga, Yasovaya-Yaga, Padu-Yaga, Oy-Yaga and Padderatta river basins. There was always enough work for veterinarians in the North, and the logical solution at that time was to create stationary veterinary stations.

The idea of centralising the life of nomadic peoples, in general, was one of the main Soviet imperatives of national policy. We can take the Nenets of Yamal as an example. Beginning in the 1920s, the USSR sought to convert nomads to a sedentary lifestyle, which was considered more progressive in terms of the stadial theory of societal development. By the 1970s, this worked out for most cases, and the deer farms became collective and state farms. The Nenets mostly lived in settled settlements, and only a small part continued to lead a nomadic lifestyle. Naturally, it was much more convenient for veterinary control and vaccination of animals, but the Nenets still had to nomadise. The idea of centralised reindeer herding in the Far North was all well and good from the point of view of organising the material base for economic development, but it did not sufficiently take into account the peculiarities of the tundra dwellers themselves. However, other countries had exactly the same problems at the same time—it took us as an industrial civilisation almost a century to figure out not to force a reindeer herder to live in a city apartment.

As soon as the large enterprises disappeared along with the party's hand, a significant part of Nenets returned to nomadic reindeer herding, and the issue of vaccination came to a head again. Today, the authorities combine the USSR's centralised approach of forcibly supplying vaccines to reindeer herders with support for the traditional nomadic way of life. In this aspect, the policy can be called balanced. In the long term, it should create conditions for the natural, gradual development of the nomads of the North, their integration into the modern economy and already post-industrial world.

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