The Sunday News
Rutendo Nyeve, Sunday News Reporter
MORE than 300 cattle in the Midlands Province have succumbed to Theileriosis, better known as January disease, with the Government scaling up measures to mitigate the effects through the implementation of the integrated tick bone disease strategy.
Theileriosis is caused by a parasite, theileria parva, which is transmitted between cattle by ticks.
The disease is responsible for huge economic losses in cattle assets and farm savings in Zimbabwe, as it accounts for more than 60 percent of cattle deaths in the country.
While the Chief Director of the Directorate of Veterinary Services (DVS) in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Dr Pious Makaya could not give statistics, sources within the department confirmed that Midlands was the hardest hit, with 991 cases and more than 360 deaths.
Matabeleland South is the second most affected with more than 620 cases and 230 deaths. Matabeleland North is the least affected with more than 260 cases and 105 deaths. However, Dr Makaya said in an interview that the DVS has managed to control the further spread of January disease but they continued getting reports of deaths of cattle in endemic areas.
“In endemic areas or farms, what happens is, as cattle come out from dipping, they get exposed to two major sources of infections. The first is they go straight to graze in pastures where there are infected ticks and they get bitten by these ticks and get infected again. The second source of infection, is cattle mix with other cattle, which will not have dipped that day. Farmers know that other farmers hide their cattle for dipping, they do not record all their cattle just to avoid forking out the dipping fee.
“So, because of this, cattle then die one by one until the whole kraal is empty. We also realise that cattle movement is also another contributing factor, which is driven by restocking from hotspots. When farmers also realise that their animals are sick, they quickly deliver the animals to abattoirs. This has seen the demand for service slaughters increasing in abattoirs because farmers are avoiding tax,” said Dr Makaya.
With farmers in the Midlands Province battling to contain the disease, which has become a perennial challenge across the region, the DVS had a meeting in Gweru to map a way forward on how the disease can be curbed.
“One of the major resolutions of that meeting was that, we implement the integrated tick bone disease strategy. This strategy is composed of dipping as I mentioned earlier on, which is the primary control method of ticks and the dipping thickness should also be tested so that we assure if the dipping is done effectively. We also want to test the acaridae resistance in ticks and the concentration of the dip wash within our dip tanks, so that we are convinced that the mixture is according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
“We realised that after dipping, animals continue to die, so as a department we agreed that though vaccination is encouraged to be done before infection happens, we can vaccinate even in hotspots where the infection has already occurred because we realised that the tick bone diseases differ from various diseases like Foot and Mouth, which spread quickly. By doing that there is a chance of saving other animals from being infected,” said Dr Makaya.
He said for farmers who want to restock after their animals have been affected by January diseases, they encourage them to vaccinate their animals before they move them to the infected farm ,or vaccinate them straight after delivery to ensure that the animals are protected.
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