Seroprevalence of foot and mouth disease, blue tongue disease and camel brucellosis in animals imported into Libya

Abstract EN

Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs) pose serious worldwide risks to livestock and food security, as well as to humans.

The world has been facing severe economic losses from epidemics of, for example, foot and mouth disease (FMD) and blue tongue disease (BT).

After the turmoil of the Arab Spring in 2011, the patterns of livestock movement between North African countries such as Libya and sub-Saharan Africa have changed, potentially increasing the spread of TADs.

We investigated the seroprevalence of FMD and BTV in sheep and cows and brucellosis in camels that had either been imported into Libya or brought illegally across the southern border.

The animals were sampled in the sea ports of Tripoli and Misrata on the Mediterranean coast and in the southern city of Sabha.

All the sheep and cows at the sea ports had been imported from Spain or France, and none of them was seropositive for FMD or BT.

But among the sample of livestock that had come into the country illegally into Sabha, 48.7% of the sheep were seropositive for BTV and 17.5% for FMD, and 2.2% of the camels were seropositive for brucellosis.

Urgent measures are needed to control the illegal influx of livestock through the southern border and to prevent the local spread of FMD and BT.