Small Ruminant Fasciolosis in Jimma Area of South Western Ethiopia: Its Epidemiology and Minimum Monetary Loss

A cross sectional tudy was conducted from November 2011 to March 2012 on 512 animals (384 sheep and 128 goats) from Jimma and surrounding districts based on coprological and postmortem examinations. The objectives of the study were to estimate the prevalence of fasciolosis, assess associated risk factors, identify Fasciola speciecs, estimate monetary loss due to liver condemnation and estimate sensetivity of sedimentation techinique for detection of Fasciola eggs. An overall prevalences of 13.3% (14.6% in sheep and 9.4% in goats) and 24.0% (26.3% in sheep and 17.2% in goats) were recorded by coprology and postmortem examinations, respectively. The prevalence of fasciolosis was 1.72, 3.00 and 4.42 times higher in sheep than goats, animals with less or equal to two years than those above 4 years old and poor conditioned compared to those with good body condition score, respectively. Both species of Fasciola were recovered from sheep and goats of all study areas; F. hepatica being predominant (12.3%) compared to F. gigantica (4.3%). The sensitivity of the sedimentation technique to detect Fasciola eggs was 55.28% in relation to postmortem examination of fresh liver and a substantial agreement (kappa = 0.653) was obtained between the two tests. The minimum annual monetary loss from liver condemnation alone was 21,045.90 Ethiopian Birr (1,238.00 USD with 1 USD = 17.00 ETB). Study on eocnomic and public health implication of the parsite together with molecular typing of specices circulating in the area are recommended.