Prevalence of Trypanosoma infection and associated risk factors in Camels in Lasbela District, Baluchistan (original) (raw)

Trypanosomiasis is the most significant disease of camels across the globe. It causes huge economic as well as animal health losses in Pakistan. Trypanosomiasis is commonly caused by Trypanosoma evansi; however other Trypanosoma species can also produce the disease but have not been reported in Pakistan, yet. The outbreaks and prevalence of the disease is still not documented in Baluchistan province. Trypanosoma evansi is thought to be responsible for such high mortality, which resulted in great economic and production losses. In the current study 100 camel samples (27 male and 73 female) from three tehsils of Lasbela district were examined using microscopic and molecular (PCR) examination. For microscopic study 0.2 ml blood was collected from ear vein and for molecular examination 5 ml blood was collected from jugular vein. The PCR based prevalence was found to be 20%. Two cases were recognized microscopically and 5 were confirmed by PCR examination. PCR has much higher diagnostic sensitivity than the conventional microscopic examination. It improves the species specificity in diagnosis of trypanosomiasis compared to microscopic examination. The infection was more prevalent in the adult camels than the younger ones and the infection was more prevalent in Lasi breed compared to Makrani breed. This study confirms that trypanosomiasis is a possible threat, affecting the health and productivity of camels, in particular adult animals. To study the husbandry practices of camel herds a questionnaire was designed which included data on farm type, camel population age and sex of the animals, educational status of the farmer, flies control strategy, housing material, feeding practices are included in the study. The data described that all the farmers (n=12) were uneducated, most of the farmers had dependency for their livelihoods on livestock and agriculture business. More than 70% of farmers kept local breed. All of them practiced pasture based farming system. They said that flies burden were high in summer season and they neither applied any flies control measure nor any veterinary team ever visited their farm.