Crops, forest products, pest control
General pests and disease
Research reports for "zoonoses"
General pests and disease
Research reports for "zoonoses"
- An easy-to-use computer program to help plan farmer-friendly tsetse control
A range of new information is now available to make people aware that effective farmer-friendly control methods do exist for tsetse fly, and to help them plan better ways of putting them into practice effectively. Examples include an easy-to-use program called ‘Tsetse Plan', which helps users design and implement tsetse control using bait techniques like insecticide-treated cattle and odour-baited traps. A range of other information is also available, including slide shows (demonstrating how technologies like traps can be built) and the www.tsetse.org website, which contains a wealth of information. These resources are now being used across many countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. However, tremendous scope still exists to extend this coverage. (Ref: AHP05) - Better planning for tsetse control
A user-friendly decision-support tool called ‘Tsetse Muse’ is now available to help users better plan and budget when using the many different methods of tsetse fly control available. Tsetse flies affect 10 million square kilometres in tropical Africa, where they transmit the trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in livestock. Plus, the flies can easily travel large distances. This means that tsetse controls are very difficult to plan, as they have to be applied over very large areas at once - often in combination. The ‘Tsetse Muse’ computer programme can help these efforts in a number of ways, and is already being applied in Botswana, Uganda, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Uses include assessing the impact and cost effectiveness of techniques like aerial spraying. (Ref: AHP15) - Combating sleeping sickness in cattle and people
A safe, accurate and easy-to-use test is now available to screen for trypanosomes. Spread by tsetse fly, these tiny parasitic organisms cause serious diseases like nagana in cattle and sleeping sickness in people. Previously, screening to prevent the spread of these diseases was slow and inaccurate. Now, just one drop of blood is enough to provide the DNA needed for analysis, and this can easily be attached to a sample-collection card and posted to a laboratory for testing. The system could have a major impact on livestock and on poor producers’ health and livelihoods, and is already being used in parts of Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. But, because most people aren’t aware of its benefits, this ready-to-use technique urgently needs to be promoted. (Ref: AHP01) - Waking up to better ways of tackling sleeping sickness - 1
New, cost-effective ways of controlling sleeping sickness in people and nagana in cattle are being applied in Uganda. These techniques involve treating infected cattle with drugs that kill blood-borne trypanosomes (which cause these diseases), and applying insecticides to the specific parts of the cattle that tsetse fly bite to feed (like the legs and belly). Conventional methods of tackling sleeping sickness concentrate on detecting and treating human cases and killing the tsetse flies that spread the disease. But, this doesn’t address the fact that cattle are the major reservoir of the disease. In fact, almost 50% of the cattle living in some areas carry the disease. The new methods that have been developed offer a way of combating the problem at source. (Ref: AHP02) - Waking up to better ways of tackling sleeping sickness - 2
New, cost-effective ways of controlling sleeping sickness in people and nagana in cattle are being applied in Uganda. These techniques involve treating infected cattle with drugs that kill blood-borne trypanosomes (which cause these diseases), and applying insecticides to the specific parts of the cattle that tsetse fly bite to feed (like the legs and belly). Conventional methods of tackling sleeping sickness concentrate on detecting and treating human cases and killing the tsetse flies that spread the disease. But, this doesn’t address the fact that cattle are the major reservoir of the disease. In fact, almost 50% of the cattle living in some areas carry the disease. The new methods that have been developed offer a way of combating the problem at source. (Ref: AHP10)
General pests and disease
