Biosecurity aspects of cattle production in Western Uganda, and associations with seroprevalence of brucellosis, salmonellosis and bovine viral diarrhoea

Abstract

BackgroundMany low-income countries have a human population with a high number of cattle owners depending on their livestock for food and income. Infectious diseases threaten the health and production of cattle, affecting both the farmers and their families as well as other actors in often informal value chains. Many infectious diseases can be prevented by good biosecurity. The objectives of this study were to describe herd management and biosecurity routines with potential impact on the prevalence of infectious diseases, and to estimate the burden of infectious diseases in Ugandan cattle herds, using the seroprevalence of three model infections.ResultsFarmer interviews (n = 144) showed that biosecurity measures are rarely practised. Visitors’ hand-wash was used by 14%, cleaning of boots or feet by 4 and 79% put new cattle directly into the herd. During the 12 months preceding the interviews, 51% of farmers had cattle that died and 31% had noticed abortions among their cows. Interestingly, 72% were satisfied with the health status of their cattle during the same time period. The prevalence (95% CI) of farms with at least one seropositive animal was 16.7% (11.0;23.8), 23.6% (16.9;31.4), and 53.4% (45.0;61.8) for brucella, salmonella and BVD, respectively.A poisson regression model suggested that having employees looking after the cattle, sharing pasture with other herds, and a higher number of dead cattle were associated with a herd being positive to an increasing number of the diseases. An additive bayesian network model with biosecurity variables and a variable for the number of diseases the herd was positive to resulted in three separate directed acyclic graphs which illustrate how herd characteristics can be grouped together. This model associated the smallest herd size with herds positive to a decreasing number of diseases and having fewer employees.ConclusionThere is potential for improvement of biosecurity practices in Ugandan cattle production. Salmonella, brucella and BVD were prevalent in cattle herds in the study area and these infections are, to some extent, associated with farm management practices.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12917-017-1306-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Ugandan cattle farmers’ perceived needs of disease prevention and strategies to improve biosecurity

“…However, assessments of feasibility and implementation of suggested biosecurity practices are rare [33, 36]. Available studies from East Africa [9, 15, 37–39] suggest that biosecurity is poor. In the current study, we wanted to follow up on our previous studies on biosecurity practices and prevalence of infectious diseases in the area, to learn more about the farmers’ own perception of their needs, what they could and wanted to do as regards improved biosecurity.…”

“…The aim was to have FGs that would represent different management in terms of grazing, land-ownership, wealth of farmers, herd size and number of employees. A few of the FGs included one or two farmers who had participated in a previous study from which they knew the status of their herd regarding three endemic infectious diseases (salmonellosis, brucellosis, and bovine viral diarrhoea) and had been given basic biosecurity advice [9].…”

“…In Kamwenge and Kasese, the first author met with the notetakers and explained the purpose of the study, how the focus group discussions and recruitment of participants would be performed, before recruitment was initiated. All local team members except the interpreter had worked with the first author earlier the same year [9, 29].…”

Increasing the Local Relevance of Epidemiological Research: Situated Knowledge of Cattle Disease Among Basongora Pastoralists in Uganda

“…Brucellosis was only mentioned in two out of ten FGDs, and never mentioned as an important disease. In recent findings from the same area by Wolff et al ( 27 ) the prevalence of brucellosis was high (40%).…”

“…In these two groups, the syndrome was discussed at length and seemed to have had very negative impacts for the participants. The syndrome translated as “ECF in calves” might equally have been translated as “high fever in calves” and might actually be the same disease as “diarrhoa in calves.” These two accounts of a disease new to the study community that presents with high case fatality rate in young calves can be triangulated with recent findings reporting high prevalence of bovine viral diarrhoa virus in the same area ( 27 ). It can be noted here that if our study had only been about one disease, e.g., ECF, our conclusion regarding the local reports on ECF might instead be only that there is a lack of knowledge on ECF in the study village.…”