ETHICOBOTS 2 - One Health Research for Impact

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Ethiopia is the second most populous sub Saharan African country. It is also a predominantly agrarian country struggling to emerge from extreme poverty through an ambitious national growth and transformation plan, aiming to achieve middle income status by 2025. Livestock contributes to a high proportion of national income and is a pillars of economic development. Traditional extensive farming systems are being supplemented and replaced with intensive farming, in the case of dairy production using imported Holstein-Friesian crosses to meet high demand for dairy products in the rapidly growing urban population. Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is endemic in Ethiopia and the prevalence is high in the emerging intensive dairy population, but currently low in local Zebu cattle. Periurban expansion of dairy farms has created hotspots of TB infection and there are no statutory controls in Ethiopia. Consequently, the potential for spread of bTB through trade is an emerging risk.Our ongoing ZELS research in Ethiopia, Ethiopian Control of Bovine Tuberculosis Strategies (ETHICOBOTS) aims to provide a scientific understanding for the development of sustainable control strategies for bTB in Ethiopia, to reduce the high rate of bTB and its zoonotic transfer in the expanding dairy sector, especially to more disadvantaged population sectors. This Supplementary proposal 'ETHICOBOTS 2 - One Health with Impact' focusses on ensuring maximal impact of the research undertaken to date. It will improve the scientific base established in ETHICOBOTS and will provide clear, evidence-based tools to tackle the high burden of bTB in different sectors of the dairy industry and any zoonotic transmission. We will deliver this work through three specific work-packages, addressing critical evidence gaps to maximise impact: - Develop a pathway for the Elimination of bovine TB infection from a sub-set of national herds, working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock to clear Government farms of bTB. These farms will provide a clear local exemplar of how disease control based surveillance programmes can be successfully implemented. This will generate additional data on disease control and explore the prevalence of anergy, or test-insensitivity, in bovine TB infected cattle. - Explore new tools to communicate disease control to farmers. We will work with innovators in this field who have established new ways to communicate with farmers in other parts of Africa and in a collaboration with Farmerline, we will test their methods in Ethiopian dairies.- Address the major evidence gap regarding the cause of tuberculous disease in humans at high risk of exposure to infected cattle. Working with patients and health care facilities in areas with a high prevalence of bTB infection in cattle, we will markedly improve the diagnostic rate in TB patients by improving culture methods and by using modern molecular test to identify the causative disease agent (M. tuberculosis and M. bovis) in a range of samples, including testing for dual infections The results will provide practical and effective bTB control strategies, targeted at the disease and its zoonotic transmission to humans. Delivering impact through close collaboration with key government and industry stakeholders, we aim to prevent further geographic spread of the disease and to minimise the risks of further transmission to national zebu herd, to protect the livelihood of poor farmers. The project will be carried out with the active participation of the relevant government units and local communities in the field to maximize the likelihood of implementation of results into policy and practice.