Seroprevalence and sero-conversion after vaccination against Peste des Petits Ruminants in sheep and goats from Awash Fentale District, Afar, Ethiopia

A cross-sectional epidemiological study followed by vaccination and postvaccinal serum antibody assessment against Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) in small ruminant population of Awash Fentale District, Afar, Ethiopia, was conducted from September 2006 to June 2007 with the aim of investigating seroprevalence and post-vaccination sero-conversion rate. A total of 1239 sera collected from sheep and goats which were not vaccinated, were screened by using nucleoprotein-based competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (c-ELISA). Only 21 (1.70%) animals were found to be positive. Following the base-line seroprevalence study, small ruminants in the area were vaccinated using the attenuated homologous PPR virus (Nigeria 75/1) strain vaccine, produced at National Veterinary Institute (NVI) in Debre-Zeit, Ethiopia. A total of 1096 small ruminants were resampled from the vaccinated population fourteen days after vaccination. The postvaccination sero-conversion rate in the population was found to be 61.13%, indicating a relatively weak herd immunity. The main reason for the low sero-conversion could be the thermolabile nature of the vaccine, since no statistically significant difference was observed between small ruminants vaccinated by Veterinary Professionals and Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs), using Chi-squared test at 95% CI (P > 0.05). This signifies the need for thermostable vaccine that could potentially increase the herd immunity in addition to that being administered by CAHWs independently. The current finding indicated that CAHWs could participate in vaccination campaigns in such areas as Afar, where there are few veterinarians despite of the huge livestock populations, as means of pastoralists’ livelihood.