Abstract
Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious and economically important disease of cloven-hoofed animals, which is endemic in Ethiopia. An outbreak follow-up study was undertaken to quantify the transmission parameters of FMD in the crop-livestock mixed (CLM) system and commercial dairy farms in selected areas of northwest Ethiopia. The transmission parameters were quantified using a generalised linear model (GLM) based on a susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) epidemic model. The per day average transmission rate between animals was 0.26 (95% CI 0.22-0.32) and 0.33 (95% CI 0.21-0.57) in the CLM system and in the commercial dairy farms, respectively. The average basic reproduction ratio of FMD was 1.68 (95% CI 1.42-2.07) in the CLM system and 1.98 (95% CI 1.26-3.42) in the commercial dairy farms. The medium per day transmission rate and moderate basic reproduction ratio observed in this study indicated that a vaccination coverage needed to stop transmission of the disease in these populations might not be very high.
Highlights
Ethiopia has approximately 59.5 million cattle, 30.7 million sheep and 30.2 million goats [1]
Among all these animals monitored, 16 896 (13 847 cattle and 3049 sheep and goats) of them were kept in 1291 herds in the crop–livestock mixed (CLM) production system and the remaining 88 animals were kept in five herds in the commercial dairy production system
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in Ethiopia in which the transmission parameters for foot and mouth disease (FMD) have been quantified from real outbreak situations in the field
Summary
Ethiopia has approximately 59.5 million cattle, 30.7 million sheep and 30.2 million goats [1]. Livestock production in Ethiopia broadly classified into three systems: crop–livestock mixed (CLM), pastoral and market-oriented production systems. The dominant production system is the CLM system, which accounts for about 80–85% of the cattle population [2]. The pastoral production system is the second most dominant farming system, which is commonly practiced in the arid and semiarid peripheral parts of the country, and accounts for about 15–20% of the cattle population [2]. The third type of production system is market-oriented production in urban and peri-urban parts of the country, which is very small and primarily consists of dairy cattle and to some extent feedlots. One of the main reasons for this is the widespread occurrence of many infectious diseases, such as foot and mouth disease (FMD), which drastically reduces the production and productivity of livestock [3]
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