|
Trypanosomosis is a serious constraint to livestock production and agriculture in much of southwest Ethiopia. The parasite that causes this disease is known as a trypanosome and is carried by the tsetse fly. For many years ILRI has researched the various factors affecting levels of trypanosomosis in village cattle in the Ghibe valley, about 180 km south-west of Addis Ababa. |
||
|
The persistently high prevalence of trypanosomes found in cattle has been shown to be associated with a high level of resistance to all available trypanocidal drugs (Codjia et al., 1993; Rowlands et al., 1993). Whilst treatment with diminazene aceturate (a trypanocidal drug used to treat trypanosomosis in cattle) was found to maintain cattle in reasonable health, it was clearly not possible, in the presence of multi-drug resistance, to eliminate infection. The only possible approach to alleviate the problem was to reduce tsetse fly challenge by controlling the population of the tsetse (Glossina spp.) vector, and to see whether, by doing so, the prevalence of drug-resistant infections could be reduced. |
|
|
