Development of a control strategy towards elimination of Trypanosoma evansi infection (surra) in camels in Africa.

With an increasing worldwide population that presently exceeds 38 million, camels are important source of meat, milk, and transportation of goods, in many regions of the world. Camels are particularly critical in the northern parts of Africa, above the tsetse belt. However, camel breeding areas are expanding into southern areas, under the pressures of global warming, leading to increasing risk of acquiring parasitic infections in these non-traditional ecotypes.

Transport of Moving Duck Flocks in Indonesia and Vietnam: Management Practices That Potentially Impact Avian Pathogen Dissemination.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus is endemic in Indonesia and Vietnam, where "moving" duck production is commonly practiced. Questionnaire surveys were conducted with transporters of "moving" duck flocks in Indonesia ( = 55) and Vietnam ( = 43). The main purpose of transportation was to transport duck flocks between rice paddies used for scavenging.

Pig traders' networks on the Kenya-Uganda border highlight potential for mitigation of African swine fever virus transmission and improved ASF disease risk management.

We applied social network analysis to pig trader networks on the Kenya-Uganda border. Social network analysis is a recently developed tool, which is useful for understanding value chains and improving disease control policies. We interviewed a sample of 33 traders about their experiences with trade and African swine fever (ASF), analyzed the networks they generated in purchasing pigs and selling pork and their potential contribution to modulating dissemination of the ASF virus (ASFV).

Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (lung sickness) in Africa.

Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) or lung sickness, is an insidious pneumonic disease of cattle caused by Mycoplasma mycoides subspecies mycoides small colony variant (MmmSC) and it is one of the major diseases affecting cattle in Africa. With the imminent eradication of rinderpest from Africa (Somali ecosystem) CBPP has become the disease of prime concern in terms of epizootics that affect cattle on the continent. The control and/or eradication of the disease have suffered from unsustained control actions due to lack of operational funds to support such actions and deterioration in the quality of veterinary services in many countries affected by the disease.

Experience in control of avian influenza in Africa.

The first outbreak of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Africa was confirmed at Kaduna, Nigeria, on 8 February 2006. Within three months, seven other countries on the continent, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Niger and Sudan, were infected. More recently Ghana and Togo became infected.