Zoonotic and animal diseases
Ethiopia is known as the leading African country in livestock population. Livestock is mostly kept by smallhold farmers and serves as an important source of meat, milk, cash, hair/wool and foreign currency for the country through the export of live animals and their products. The productivity of these huge livestock resources, however, is very low mainly due to the prevailing diseases, poor management practices and socio-cultural values and attitudes. Among the major livestock diseases are gastro-intestinal parasites, liver fluke, trypanosomosis and mastitis. Also, livestock may be a source/reservoir for infections of humans (zoonotic diseases) such as hydatidosis, cysticercosis, fasciolosis, brucellosis and tuberculosis. Finally, due to insufficient and low quality natural grazing areas, nutritional stress occurs for grazing animals during a long period of the year.
The School of Veterinary Medicine and the Department of Animal Science collaborate in this project to contribute to the alleviation of food insecurity and poverty by increasing animal productivity and reducing the impact of zoonotic diseases. The epidemiology of trypanosomosis, fasciolosis, GI nematodes, mastitis and the zoonotic importance of cysticercosis and hydatitosis in the Jimma zone is studied, appropriate control measures/recommendations of the important animal diseases and zoonotic infections are developed and the feed resources of livestock in terms of quantity and quality are studied
Research topics
Trypanosoma
Helminths
Mastitis and M-team website
Zoonoses
Animal nutrition