Malumfashi Endemic Diseases Research Project XII

Abstract

Slaughter-slab surveys of livestock within the human schistosomiasis study area of Malumfashi revealed a very low prevalence of snail-borne trematode infections. The drought of 1973 was responsible for a decline in Schistosoma haematobium transmission, but there were other factors responsible for the less than 5% prevalence of bovine schistosomiasis and fascioliasis in the surveyed animals. The husbandry method of the settled farmers accounted for a low prevalence of trematode infections in their goats and sheep, and most of the infected animals probably acquired S. bovis and Fasciola gigantica outside the study area. The dry seasonal conditions had been unfavourable for fascioliasis transmission, but there may have been the added factor of S. bovis incompatibility with available snail hosts to account for the low level of bovine schistosomiasis transmission.

The recent construction of several low earth dams in this dry part of northern Nigeria is likely to sustain the recent upward trend in S. haematobium transmission. It is also likely that the level of infections with S. bovis and F. gigantica will increase among settled animals in such areas, where conditions will favour the introduction and growth of Bulinus and Lymnaea snail populations. Moreover, the dams are attracting Fulani-owned cattle which contaminate the northern water-environment with infections acquired during their seasonal migration to wetter, southern areas where snail host populations are more stable and abundant. Beef is an important element of the livestock industry and it is likely that the expected increase in the intensity of bovine trematode infections will be of economic importance in Nigeria.