Sero-epidemiology of peste des petits ruminants in Oromia and Afar regional states of Ethiopia.

Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) is a severe non-zoonotic viral disease of small ruminants caused by a morbillivirus closely related to rinderpest virus (RPV). The disease is widespread in Africa, the Middle East and Southern Asia. It is one of the priority animal diseases whose control is considered important for poverty alleviation in those regions because of the associated high economic losses. A sero-epidemiological study of PPR was conducted in Oromia and Afar regional states of Ethiopia. A total of 800 serum samples from sheep and goats were collected between October 2015 and March 2016 in Afar and Oromia, where no vaccination history has been recorded. These two regions are known to have a large population of small ruminants. The levels of PPR antibodies obtained in the two regions using the competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (cELISA) ID Screen® PPR Competition from IDvet (Montpellier, France) were similar, at 12.7% and 13.0% for Afar and Oromia, respectively. A seroprevalence of 12.9% for the two regions was obtained. The study also linked seropositivity to risk factors such as sex, age and species with a p-value of less than 0.05 (p = 0.0001, p = 0.0001 and p = 0.004, respectively).