Anthrax: Nigerians don’t have to panic — Vet Association boss

FOLLOWING the Federal Ministry of Livestock alerting Nigerians over the outbreak of anthrax in Zamfara State, former National President, Nigerian Veterinary Medical Association, Dr. Gani Enahoro, yesterday, urged Nigerians not to panic, but take preventive measures to contain spread of the disease.

Speaking with Vanguard, Enahoro who is also a specialist in Veterinary Clinical Pathology, said part of the measures to contain the outbreak of anthrax, livestock farmers include to adopt biosecurity measures.

According to him, primarily, livestock such as cattle, sheep and goats were affected by the disease, and man can also contract the disease if they have direct contact with infected animals.

He said: “Nigerians don’t have to panic about the Anthrax disease reported. The veterinary authorities have their jobs well cut out. Let no one consume meat from animals that die suddenly, no matter how poverty-stricken, it could be the end of lives. Farmers should consult animal health workers and be willing to pay for their services. Prevention is better than cure.

“It is necessary to inform livestock farmers that biosecurity measures are critical at times like this. Where properly deployed, they could serve to protect their animals just as the vaccines could also biologically be helpful.

“The prevention of spread has to be done in two ways by the farmers. The first is to save himself and the other people nearby from death and then should follow up with sufficient biosecurity measures to save other animals from contracting the disease. The immediate thing to do if an animal dies is to report to the veterinarian closest to them for a proper clinical assessment of the dead animal and the other in-contacts ante-mortem. This is because if Anthrax was the cause, the bacterium sporulates a lot and the spores produced if inhaled by man could be almost always fatal.”

However, he explained that the implications of not tackling the disease was that there could be recurrence.

“Implications for failure to tackle the disease now is that wherever anthrax had occurred in the past could become centres of continuous and future outbreaks because the spores are highly resilient and can survive and stay in the soil for decades until grazing animals ingest, or inhale the spores again, and the cycle of infection will commence.

“And because man can be infected when they have direct contact with infected animals, caution should be the watchword.

“Unfortunately, our smallholder farmers are often impatient to follow this simple procedure, especially when they see butchers ready to criminally collaborate to buy their dead animals. Again that’s also one of the occupational hazards that animal health workers like veterinarians and Veterinary paraprofessionals are exposed to.

“But are there markers or signs that we normally should look out for when animals die from Anthrax? Yes for the trained eyes. The most characteristic is that blood will ooze from all the natural orifices like the mouth, nose, anus, and even from the corners of the eyes in some cases. However, depending on the case severity, these openings might not all exhibit this bleeding at the same time.”