BUJUMBURA, February 27th (ABP) – Zoonoses are diseases in which the pathogen (bacteria, virus or parasite) can be transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa. They are spread by direct contact with excrement, blood, touch, shared food or even utensils. This was announced by Franck Ndayikengurukiye, a veterinary technician, in an interview with ABP on Wednesday 26 February 2025.
According to Ndayikengurukiye, zoonoses include ringworm, Q fever, chlamydia, leptospirosis, salmonellosis and listeriosis. He focused on rabbit fever, an infectious zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium francisella tularensis, characterised by progressive inflammation at the point of infection, swelling and lymph nodes. The disease is treated with general antibiotic therapy for both humans and rabbits. Ndayikengurukiye added that if the disease is located in the stomach, it progresses slowly and the person can go from one to five days without being aware of having contracted the disease; whereas in the lungs, it progresses very rapidly and can lead to death. In his opinion, there is no vaccine against this disease.
As far as prevention is concerned, Ndayikengurukiye suggests that farmers adopt rigorous hygiene, avoid sharing utensils between animals and humans, and not forget to select the livestock carefully before putting them in the pen, i.e. choose healthy animals, check at all times that there are no cases of disease in the pen if there are any, isolate them and treat them as soon as possible to avoid contamination of others, and not forget to disinfect the pens. Good animal health is the same as good human health.