Appraisal of Brucella Infection Disease in Dairy Cattle in Khartoum North

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess and provide an overview to find out about the burden and impact of brucellosis on milking dairy cattle, and to study the suitable diagnostic techniques to detect brucellosis according to the economical point of view in Khartoum North, Sudan. The present study showed the serological result for brucella by different methods of diagnostic techniques, which applied on 100 cows, selected randomly from 20 farms, from each five blood samples. The study were showed in comparison between two categories, professional and non-professional farms management. It recorded a highly occurrence of infection in non-professional farms 30%, and low occurrence 6% in professional farms. The tests results of the study was obtained by four different serological diagnostic methods, Rose Bengal Plate Test, Modified Rose Bengal Plate Test, Buffer Acidified Plate Antigen and Serum Agglutination Test, and was concluded that the overall sero-prevalence of brucellosis on milking dairy cattle was 13% by RBPT, 16% by mRBPT, 16% by BAPA and 17% by SAT. The statistical analysis recorded that there was no significant difference between three diagnostic techniques depicted in the study, mRBPT-BAPA and SAT, which gave similar results 16%-17%, but the results 13% which obtained by RBPT had a high significant difference. This implies that the former three techniques mRBPT-BAPA and SAT are more sensitive and reliable to be adopted than the latter one RBPT, which gave some false negative results. The present recorded a highly incidence by brucellosis recorded 16%-17%, which considered as a high infection by brucella, and can pose a considerable potential risk to the public health, animal health, welfare and production. Application of bio-security is very weak, the absence or lack of control and hygiene measures and inadequate application of vaccination programme had played a major roles in the spread of the disease. The study concluded that Khartoum North area should be considered as endemic with bovine brucellosis, and the situation should be tackled seriously considering its negative impact and the zoonotic nature of the disease.