Annual report of the Veterinary Department, Sudan Government.

  • Sudan. Veterinary Department.
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Veterinary Department, Sudan Government. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/56 (page 5)
    Should it be impossible to isolate the infected herd effectively as may be the case in the dry season when cattle concentrate in large numbers on the available wells and watering places, all the cattle using a particular well or meshra. must be considered as infected and every effort has to be made to prevent contact between them and healthy herds—by no means an easy task when grazing is scarce and the cattle are consequently grazing over a large area. It will be evident, therefore, that when an outbreak occurs at a favourable season of the year, when grazing and water is plentiful, it can be confined to a small number of cattle with correspondingly small losses whereas, in the dry season, an outbreak tends to become widespread and, owing to the scanty grazing and the hardship suffered iii making long marches between water and the grazing area, the mortality is high. Double inoculations, that is, the simultaneous injection of suitable doses of virulent rinderpest blood and of carefully regulated doses of anti-rinderpest serum, were carried out in the Berber and Kassala Provinces in 1904 when upwards of 8,000 head of cattle weredealt with. Under certain conditions this method of inoculation gives excellent results but, if it is to be carrried out properly, it is considered that its application can only be a very limited one in this country. In Eritrea, where the grazing and water conditions are much more favourable than in this country for the successful prosecution of a campaign of double inoculation, the Government has decided to double inoculate everj^ bovine in the territory. During the last twelve years a million cattle have been treated in this way and the average losses from inoculation are reported to have been three and a half per cent. In individual cases, however, the losses have been as high as thirty per cent, and, in view of similar experiments in other parts of Africa, one is not inclined to embark lightly on a double inoculation campaign of an extensive nature without proper facilities and an adequate and thoroughly trained staff. The serum requirements of the Department were obtained from Egypt during the year and experiments were undertaken to ascertain what difficulties if any had to be overcome before serum could be produced locally. The results of these experiments were very satisfactory but, although the cost of production is estimated to be much below the price at present charged by the Egyptian Veterinary Authorities, it was later found that the Eritrean Government could supply the quantities required at a still lower figure owing, chiefly, to the better climatic conditions obtaining in Eritrea and the com¬ paratively low cost of maintaining the cattle used for serum produc¬ tion. It has therefore been decided to obtain the serum required for the next year from Eritrea but, at the same time, it is considered not desirable to rely entirely on extraneous sources of supply and experiments in anti-rinderpest serum production will be continued from time to time so that the Departmental requirements could be produced locally, without undue delay, in the event of any crisis arising. Contagious Bovine Pleuro-Pneumonia. The earliest history of contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia obtainable in the Sudan is that the disease came in from the West