Survey of the seroprevalence of brucellosis in ruminants in Tajikistan

BRUCELLOSIS due to Brucella melitensis causes reproductive wastage and reduced milk production in affected livestock and is an important zoonosis. The disease in human beings is serious and long-lasting, and often results in chronic and disabling sequelae. In Tajikistan, the disease was apparently reasonably well controlled in Soviet times by a state-mandated control programme that relied mainly on test and slaughter and some vaccination with Brucella abortus strain 82 vaccine. The serious deterioration in disease control programmes following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 led to disease breakdowns like those experienced in similarly affected countries such as Kazakhstan (Taleski and others 2002) and Kosovo (Jackson and others 2004). There are now widespread concerns among public health agencies that the incidence of the disease in human beings is increasing, but lack of funds, numerous small farm units, outdated legislation, disruption to communications in winter and uncontrolled movements of livestock are major impediments to the disease control programmes undertaken by the Tajikistan Ministry of Agriculture. Subsistence farming has been widely practised in Tajikistan since the early 1990s following the divestment of state-owned collective farming systems to private ownership of animals. Now, approximately 80 per cent of households own livestock, mostly sheep and goats and smaller numbers of cattle. Kishlak (village) household flocks and herds are grazed collectively close by as a unit for most of the year, but many kishlaks participate in annual migrations to highaltitude summer pastures where the flocks and herds are grazed collectively. The productivity of the livestock is generally low owing to poor utilisation of pastures, uncontrolled breeding, low reproduction rates, and high mortalities of young sheep and goats due to diseases such as peste des petits ruminants and foot-and-mouth disease. The objectives of this survey were, first, to determine the seroprevalence of brucellosis in sheep and goats in two of the four oblasts (provinces) in Tajikistan, that is, the Region of Republican Subordination (RRS) and Khatlon, in sheep, goats and cattle in urban kishlaks (suburban villages) in the cities of Kurgan Tube and Dushanbe, and in cattle on 11 government dairy farms; and secondly, to provide information that could be used in human and animal disease control programmes.