Participatory Disease Surveillance in the Detection of Trans- Boundary Animal Diseases (TADS) in Borno State of Arid North- Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

This paper reports the detection of trans-boundary animal diseases using participatory disease surveillance in Borno State. Participatory epidemiology is an emerging field that is based on the use of participatory techniques for harvesting qualitative epidemiological intelligence contained within community observations, existing veterinary knowledge and traditional oral history. Different techniques of participatory disease surveillance used for this study includes simple ranking, pair wise ranking, proportional piling, transect walk and interview with key informants with the use of check list as a guide were applied in randomly selected 35 villages/communities cutting across all the 3 senatorial districts in Borno State. Analysis of data indicated that the most dominant livestock species in the study area is cattle. The various livestock diseases occurring in the communities visited were identified. The most prevalent disease of cattle is foot and mouth disease (FMD), peste des petits ruminants (PPR) in sheep and goats and Newcastle disease (ND) in poultry. The transboundary animal diseases detected in the study area were FMD, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP), bovine tuberculosis, anthrax, PPR and ND. The use of participatory disease surveillance proved to be a useful tool for detecting disease problems from farmers.

Keywords: Participatory disease surveillance, Trans-boundary animal diseases, Borno State, Nigeria.