Epidemiological Evidences of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and Haemorrhagic Septicaemia (HS) of Buffalo in Sylhet Region of Bangladesh Based on Hospital Register Data

Abdul Majid Ujjal2, Sharmin Akter1* and Suman Paul1

1Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet-3100, Bangladesh; 2Masters students at Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet-3100, Bangladesh.

Editor | Muhammad Abubakar, National Veterinary Laboratories, Park Road, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Received | March 03, 2018; Accepted | March 28, 2018; Published | April 25, 2018

*Correspondence | Sharmin Akter, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet-3100, Bangladesh; Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

Citation | Ujjal, A.M., Akter, S. and Paul, S. 2018. Epidemiological evidences of foot and mouth disease (FMD) and haemorrhagic septicaemia (HS) of buffalo in Sylhet Region of Bangladesh based on hospital register data. Veterinary Sciences: Research and Reviews, 4(1): 9-16.

DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.17582/journal.vsrr/2018.4.1.9.16

Keyword | Buffalo diseases, FMD, HS, Hospital prevalence, Epidemic curve

Introduction

Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) is one of the most important livestock species distributed worldwide specially in tropical and sub-tropical countries (Das and Khan, 2010). Not only for providing better quality milk, but also for quality meat and draught purpose use; now-a-days buffalo raising become popular. The global buffalo population is estimated to be approximately 194.29 million over 42 countries (Hamid et al., 2016) and buffalo in Asia dominate the world population, representing 92.52% (179.75 million) of the total buffalo population (FAO, 2012). Within the Asian region, about 79.74% of buffaloes are in South Asian countries and the rest 20.26% in other countries. India and Pakistan are the two buffalo rich countries in the world that contributes 58.11% and 16.83% of world buffalo population, respectively (FAO, 2012). In Bangladesh, the farmers especially from hilly areas, river basins and low lying marshy lands are more dependent on buffaloes than cattle. As estimated, there are 445,000 buffaloes spreading over Bangladesh which mainly depend on grass and small quantities of agricultural wastes (Saadullah, 2012).

Buffalo provides major contribution after cattle to livestock sector more especially to the rural economy of Bangladesh (Saadullah, 2012). Generally buffalo is regarded as more productive and more useful than the cow, especially for the poorest “backyard” farmers (Rajput et al., 2005). Though buffaloes serve milk, meat and supply draught power and play a very important role in overall livestock economy of Bangladesh (Ghaffar et al., 1991), research on buffalo in comparison to cattle has been much neglected. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2000) has rightly termed buffalo as ‘an asset undervalued’.

Moreover, research especially on buffalo diseases is surprisingly scarce in Bangladesh. Buffalo diseases have been identified as one of the major factor which have disrupted the overall development of the industry in Asia and have caused substantial economic loss to the poor subsistent farmers in the developing countries.

Like other developing countries, buffalo production systems and its use vary widely in different areas of Bangladesh according to its geography, climatic and socio-economic condition (Saadullah, 2012). In Sylhet, Most of them are reared with other livestock population with no or minimal inputs and mostly maintained under scavenging systems.

So that different infectious diseases spread more rapidly in buffalo. Moreover, most of the owners are unaware about this spreading and thus buffalo suffer from many diseases, which reduce the performance of them as well as cause huge economical loss of the farmer. But, no systemic work has been documented till date on buffalo diseases and their management in Bangladesh. At the same time, epidemiological scenario of Buffalo diseases at Sylhet region has not been fully analyzed. These kinds of information might be valuable for realizing the economic importance as well as epidemiology of Buffalo diseases and disorders. Considering the above fact, the objectives of the present study was to find out the clinical prevalence of Buffalo diseases to understand the disease burden and to determine the temporal distribution of important buffalo infectious diseases like Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and Hemorrhagic Septicemia (HS) in selected upazilas at Sylhet region.

Materials and Methods

This study was based on the information collected from secondary sources in a retrospective view. The data were collected passively from the patient registers of Upazila Veterinary Hospital of Jaintapur, Kanaighat and Gowainghat, Sylhet. Cases of buffalo diseases recorded in patient registers for a period of two years started from October, 2015 to September, 2017 are entered into Excel spread sheet.

After scrutiny, information about 1057 diseased buffalo were listed in the spread sheet and used for the analysis in this study. Patient registers of these three veterinary hospitals enlisted only few information of each buffalo like age, sex, date of treatment, owners complain and diagnosis and treatment. Thus, only few variables like age, sex, season, Upazila were used in the analysis.

After collection of all these data, descriptive analyses were performed. Some variables like age of animal and date of diagnosis/reporting were categorized for convenient. Age was categorized into three group namely ‘upto two years’ (calf), ‘Above two years to four years’ (young) and ‘Above four years’ (Adult) and variable season was created using the reporting date of the patient. After manipulation of these variables, prevalence of buffalo diseases were estimated by using the following equation:

Prevalence (%) = (Number of affected buffaloes at a given time/Total number of patient attended) x 100

Study population of this study did not represent the true buffalo population of the selected upazilas. Hence, prevalences reported in this report might overestimate the prevalence of buffalo diseases. Thus, henceforth prevalence estimates of this report will be considered as hospital prevalence. After estimation of prevalence of buffalo diseases, two important infectious diseases namely FMD and HS were selected based on their prevalence and data were analyzed further for identifying epidemiological parameters of these diseases. Variations of prevalences of two selected diseases among different age groups, seasons, sex and upazilas were assessed by chi-square tests and statistical significances of these variations were evaluated. Variations obtained p value <0.05 were considered as cut off value for this test.

For assessing the overall temporal trend of FMD in the selected areas, epidemic curves were constructed by plotting the weekly recorded number of FMD cases in the study against the occurring weeks. Similar temporal trend for HS was constructed to see the variations in temporal trends in relation to seasons.

Results

The study was conducted among the naturally infected buffaloes that were brought to the selective three (Jaintapur, Kanaighat and Gowainghat) Upazilla Veterinary Hospitals, Sylhet from October 2015 to September 2017. A total of 1057diseased buffalos data were recorded among which, 415 (39.26%) were recorded from Jaintapur and rest 322 (30.47%) and 320 (30.27%) from Kanaighat and Gowainghat upazila respectively. Total 589 (%) male and 468 (%) female buffalos were counted for different diseases within this period. Total 232 buffalo were counted for ‘upto two years’ age group, 388 and 437 were recorded for ‘Above two years to four years’ and ‘Above four years’ age group, respectively. A total of 338 (31.98%) cases were recorded in winter season, whereas 364 (34.44%) and 355 (33.59%) cases were recorded in summer and rainy seasons, respectively (Table 1).

Overall disease status

In Table 2, prevalences of different buffalo diseases with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were presented. The prevalence of helminthiasis was the highest (22.32%; 95% CI: 19.92% - 24.94%). Prevalences of other economically important disease like FMD and HS were 20.71% and 10.78%, respectively. Prevalence of Bovine epimeral fever, Black quarter, Corneal opacity, Foot rot, Wart were recorded 3.78%, 2.36%, 4.16%, 1.22% and 0.94%, respectively. Among the reported infectious diseases, FMD and HS data were further analyzed due to their higher estimated prevalences.

Table 1: Distribution of cases of buffalo diseases recorded in selected upazila veterinary hospitals of Sylhet district from October, 2015 to September, 2017.

Within the recorded disease cases, 219 buffaloes were tentatively diagnosed as FMD infected, hence, the overall hospital prevalence of FMD was estimated 20.71% (95% CI: 18.38-23.27%). It was observed that prevalence varied significantly (p<0.01) among veterinary hospitals with highest prevalence was observed in Jaintapur (26.75%) followed by Gowainghat (17.50%) and Kanaighat (16.15%). Sex wise variation of FMD occurrence in buffalo was statistically insignificant (p=0.36) (Table 3). Significant variation of hospital prevalence of FMD was also observed in different age group animals (p< 0.01). Highest prevalence of FMD (36.08%) was observed in ‘Above two years to four years’ age group and lowest prevalence (5.60%) in ‘upto two years’ age group buffaloes. Estimated prevalence in rainy seasons was 20.56% followed by 20.71% in winter and 20.87% in summer. Variations among these seasons were show statistically insignificant (P-value = 0.99).

The constructed epidemic curve of FMD using the records of these three veterinary hospitals presented in Figure 1 showed clear year round occurrence of FMD, however, no distinct peaks were observed. A peak was observed in October 2105 to February 2016 and another one started from September 2016 to November 2016 during the study period indicating winter season as the most vulnerable time for

Table 2: Hospital prevalence of overall buffalo diseases found in selected upazila veterinary hospitals, Sylhet from October, 2015 to September, 2017.

Table 3: Hospital prevalence of Foot and Mouth Disease of buffalo recorded in selected upazila veterinary hospitals, Sylhet district from October, 2015 to September, 2017.

Within the study population, 114 buffaloes were tentatively diagnosed as HS infected, hence, the overall hospital prevalence was estimated10.69% with 95% confidence interval (8.98%-12.69%) (Table 4). Prevalence of HS in different upazilas varied significantly in chi-square test (p<0.0001) where the highest prevalence was observed in Jaintapur (16.14%; 95% CI 12.92%-19.99%) followed by Gowainghat (7.81%; 95% CI 5.35%-11.28%) and Kanaighat (6.83%; 95% CI 4.55-10.13%). Statistically significant (p< 0.02) variation of hospital prevalence of HS was observed in different sex of animals. Higher prevalence of HS (12.73%) was observed in male than in female buffaloes (8.33%). Variation of prevalence of HS among different aged group animals showed significant (p<0.01) differences. Lowest prevalence (3.88%) observed in ‘upto two years’ age group and highest prevalence (18.56%) was estimated from ‘Above two years to four years’ age group buffaloes. Variable season was also found statistically significant (p<0.01. Highest prevalence of HS (17.31%) recorded in summer season and lowest prevalence (7.10%) was estimated in winter season (Table 4).

The constructed epidemic curve of HS using the records of these three veterinary hospitals presented in Figure 2 showed clear year round occurrence of HS. A clear peak was observed between May 2106 to July 2016, which corresponded to the summer season. In accordance with overall trend analysis, a peak in summer 2016 was observed Jaintapur, however, no such peak was identified in Kanighat and Gowainghat upazilas (Data not shown).

Table 4: Hospital prevalence of Haemorrhagic Septicaemia of buffalo in selected upazila veterinary hospitals, Sylhet district from October, 2015 to September, 2017.

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