Kant et al. BMC Veterinary Research (2018) 14:329 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-018-1670-2 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access A study to identify the practices of the buffalo keepers which inadvertently lead to the spread of brucellosis in Delhi Nimita Kant1, Parul Kulshreshtha1*, Rashmi Singh1, Anuradha Mal2, Amita Dwivedi1, Riya Ahuja1, Rinkle Mehra1, Mohit Tehlan1, Paritosh Ahmed1, Shilpa Kaushik1, Shipra1, Shashikant Kumar1, Aas Mohammad1, Shrikrishn Shukla1, Damini Singh3 and Rakesh Bhatnagar3,4* Abstract Background: India has the largest Buffalo population in the world, with every household in rural India owning buffaloes depending upon daily milk requirement – dairy farmers can own between 10 to 70 buffaloes. The health of Indian buffaloes is of economic importance since India is one of the largest buffalo meat exporters in the world, and Indian Buffalo semen is sold in the USA for breeding purposes. However, National Control Program on brucellosis is only active in South India and in Panjab (a North Indian state with high human brucellosis incidence). Our aim was to assess the knowledge and practices of the buffalo keepers of Delhi that make them susceptible to brucellosis. Results: Amongst all the 11 districts of Delhi, there was 0% awareness about brucellosis and also about the S19 vaccine as the buffalo keepers had never heard of S19 vaccine which is available at minimal cost from Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, India. Majority of the respondents drink raw milk, sleep in cattle sheds, do not isolate sick cattle, do not test buffaloes blood for any disease before purchasing them, apply intrauterine medicationwithbarehandstobuffalo after abortion of foetus, never clean their cattle sheds with a disinfectant and believe that they can only acquire skin infections from cattle. All of these habits make them prone to brucellosis. While about 20 to 27% of respondents reported a history of abortions and retained placenta, disposed of the placenta with bare hands, and applied raw milk on cracked lips. It was surprising to note that majority of them never reared small ruminants like sheep and goat with buffaloes or Bos species as they were aware of the rapid spread of disease from small to big ruminants. Conclusions: We found that buffalo keepers were ignorant of brucellosis, its causative agent, relevant vaccines and that they also involved in high-risk activities. As such, our findings highlight a need for buffalo keepers to be better educated via several awareness camps to minimize human exposure to Brucella in Delhi. Keywords: Brucella,Delhi,Cattlekeepers,Practices,Habits Background main reason for disease propagation in humans due to ani- Brucellosis is a classified group III risk disease which has mal handling and consumption of bovine products [11]. easy airborne transmission [6, 42]. Brucella, the causative Countries like Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Japan, Denmark, agent of brucellosis is classified by Centers For Disease Finland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden Control and Prevention or CDC as a category B pathogen and the United Kingdom have been able to eradicate that has the potential to be developed into a bioweapon. human brucellosis because they have eradicated bovine Brucellosis is endemic in India and affects dairy farming brucellosis [7, 26]. Although some reliable reports are [19, 33, 40]. Bovine brucellosis has been discovered as the available from Western countries, brucellosis is always underreported in Asian countries. It has been identified * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] that there is lack of data related to brucellosis from India, 1Department of Zoology, Shivaji College, University of Delhi, 110027, New Delhi, India China and Sub-Saharan Africa [29]. 3School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 110057, Delhi, India Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Kant et al. BMC Veterinary Research (2018) 14:329 Page 2 of 8 The world organization for animal health (OIE) de- exclusively for their household needs or for dairy farm- fines standards for surveillance, diagnosis, epidemiology, ing. This human population also includes those who control, eradication efforts, and the reduction of risk for reared few Bos species on their cattle sheds to fulfil their animal health [16]. It means that all these factors must household demands or for a few customers. This survey amalgamate to establish a better healthcare system. India does not include data from the cattle keepers who exclu- has been identified as one of the hotspots for emerging sively reared domesticated cattle (Bos species) only. Ac- infectious diseases and brucellosis is one of the emerging cording to the census of 2012 there are 162,142 female diseases [38]. New Delhi, the National Capital Territory and 20,445 male buffalos in rural and urban area of New of India, boasts of one of the best health care system in Delhi. This includes the population of 11 districts of India. But as yet the website of the Development depart- Delhi. The current census report is pending. We sur- ment of Delhi Government [http://delhi.gov.in/wps/ veyed 1200 cattle sheds which included data of 5550 wcm/connect/lib_development/Development/Home/ buffaloes (4828 females and 722 males) only. It is Citizen+Charter] does not give any information about pin-pointed that the Bos species (usually 1 to 3 in num- brucellosis. The diagnostic innovations are of no use if ber on each farm) on the surveyed cattle sheds were not people of the country have no knowledge about the dis- included in this animal count. There is no report on the ease. Therefore, spreading awareness is the most import- exact number of cattle sheds housing buffaloes per dis- ant aspect of a control program. Although the trict in Delhi. Here, a ‘cattle shed’ is defined as the cattle brucellosis control program is very aggressive in South establishment used to house buffaloes only or to house a India [14, 28], but it is very frail in North India except in few Bos species with buffaloes. These cattle establish- Punjab which is a North Indian state with a high inci- ments varied in the structure being close-house or dence of brucellosis [5]. During our study, we observed open-house or some completely on the road-side or in that the majority of the dairy farmers reared exclusively the colony lanes between boundary walls of houses. The buffaloes in Delhi. Many among them reared Bos species pictures of various cattle sheds are available as Add- in fewer numbers (to fulfil the household requirement) itional files 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. They do not resemble any than buffaloes on the same farm. The reason for this buffalo farm advertised online by Indian companies as practice was explained to be the thicker milk quality the common man cannot afford them. We tried to tap along with the higher milk volumes derived from the the maximum number of cattle sheds in each district buffaloes. As the spread of infectious diseases can be but many people were not ready to interact. Therefore regulated by amending the practices and taking precau- our study pertains to only those buffalo keepers who tions thus we did a survey to analyze the practices of the were ready to interact with the college students. buffalo keepers that may be furnishing the spread of brucellosis from the infected buffaloes. At the same Questionnaire time, we informed the buffalo keepers of the ways to A structured questionnaire was developed in English rectify their animal handling so as to improve animal language and translated in the Hindi language (the na- health and to curtail the spread of brucellosis. tive tongue of North Indians). The questionnaire con- tained both open-ended and close-ended questions. The Methods face to face method of approach was employed to collect Informed consent the data. The questionnaire is available as the supporting All the participants signed a consent form prior to file. The questionnaire revolved around the issues affect- responding to the survey. The questionnaires were ing the spread of brucellosis like biosecurity, reproduct- signed by the cattle keepers after filling them. ive health of the livestock, maintenance of cattle sheds and knowledge about zoonoses. The issues addressed by Sampling the questionnaire and their relevance to brucellosis have A purposive sampling of the buffalo keepers was con- been discussed in Table 1. Each buffalo keeper was asked ducted from August 2015 to December 2016 in order to the number of male and female buffalo housed in their analyze their practices which promote the spread of bru- cattle sheds, they were asked if they got their cattle vac- cellosis in the National Capital Territory of New Delhi, cinated or not, if yes then they were asked to name the the capital city of India. As brucellosis is regarded as an vaccines/ medicines they injected their cattle with. Each occupational hazard, therefore, this study was conducted buffalo keeper was asked if their buffaloes were prone to by interviewing the buffalo keepers of different districts miscarriages, if yes then in which month; they were of Delhi. The buffalo keepers come in close contact with asked if they separated sick animal from the healthy the livestock therefore they constitute the high risk ones; they were also asked if they consumed unboiled/ population for brucellosis.