Small Ruminant Brucellosis and Awareness of Pastoralists Community about Zoonotic Importance of the Disease in Yabello districts of Borena Zone Oromia Regional State, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Brucellosis is zoonotic disease affecting the wellbeing of human and animals mainly in developing countries. Small ruminants are important domestic animals highly adaptable to broad range of environmental conditions and income source for poor households. Cross sectional study was carried out on a total of 283 (99 sheep and 184 goat) from October 2016 and April 2017 to estimate sero prevalence of small ruminant brucellosis. In addition, structured questionnaire was also administered to 126 respondents of 10 PA's to assess community awareness about zoonotic importance of diseases. The overall sero prevalence of brucellosis in small ruminant was 23 (8.1%) (95%CI: 5.2, 11.9) byc-ELISA. The individual species sero-prevalence of Brucellosis was 9.2 (95%CI: 5.5, 14.4) and 6.1(95%CI: 2.3, 12.7) in goat and sheep respectively. Among 126, 112(88.9) of community have no knowledge about zoonotic importance of Brucellosis and ways of transmission of disease where as 14(11.1%) of them have awareness about a disease. Consequently, they handle all aborted fetus; support their animal during parturition by bare hand without any protective clothing, consume raw milk and animal blood. This suggests high risk of human brucellosis in the study area. In addition, physicians have no awareness about the disease they don't consider Brucellosis while treating patient submitted to health post with suggestive clinical sign Brucellosis. Therefore, integrated human and veterinary doctors' disease control strategy should be developed and applied to control disease both in human and animals.