544 www.roavs.com EISSN: 2223-0343 RESEARCH OPINIONS IN ANIMAL & VETERINARY SCIENCES Peste des petits ruminants in Kenya; Pastoralist knowledge of the disease in goats in Samburu and Baringo Counties Kihu S.M.* 1,2 , Njagi L.M. 3 , Njogu G.N. 3 , Kamande J.N. 1 and Gitao C.G. 2 1 Vetworks Eastern Africa, P.O. Box 10431-00200 Nairobi; 2 Faculty of veterinary medicine, University of Nairobi, P.O. Box 29053-00625 Uthiru; 3 Department of veterinary services, Veterinary Epidemiology Economic Unit, , Private bag 00625, Kangemi Abstract Peste des Petits Ruminants disease outbreak was reported in Turkana County in Kenya in 2007. This was the first time PPR had clinically been reported in Kenya. Peste des Petits Ruminants disease was then assumed to have only infected Turkana County. Participatory disease surveillance was carried out in 2007 in Samburu and Baringo Counties which neighbour Turkana County to establish whether PPR was present in these counties and to describe the local pastoralist’s perceptions of PPR. The methods used were semi-structured interviews, participatory disease risk mapping, matrix scoring and proportional piling techniques in 13 focus group discussions each with an average of nine herders from 13 villages. Twenty four serum samples for antibody analysis with competitive ELISA were collected from goat herds of respondent villages. By the time of the study, no PPR vaccination had ever been carried in Samburu and Baringo counties. The results from this study indicated that the four pastoral ethnic communities interviewed in Samburu and Baringo counties had previous experience with PPR like disease. There was local knowledge of a PPR-like disease in each pastoral community and their descriptions of this syndrome closely matched textbook descriptions of PPR. Suspected cases of PPR were observed in the study areas. 10 out of 24 serum samples collected from suspected cases had PPR antibodies, and positive samples were found in each County. Based on the local characterizations of PPR, the presence of PPR antibodies in the serum samples and clinical observation of suspected PPR cases, the study concluded that PPR was occurring in Samburu and Baringo counties of Kenya, in areas that neighboured Turkana. The morbidity and mortality in these other Counties may have been less dramatic and therefore not reached the attention of the veterinary department. Keywords: Participatory disease surveillance; Peste des petit ruminants; Kenya To cite this article: Kihu SM, Njagi LM, Njogu GN, Kamande JN and Gitao CG, 2012. Peste des petits ruminants in Kenya; Pastoralist knowledge of the disease in goats in Samburu and Baringo Counties. Res. Opin. Anim. Vet. Sci., 2(11), 544-553. Introduction A Peste des petit ruminants (PPR) is an acute or sub-acute febrile highly contagious and often fatal disease of sheep, goats and wild small ruminants (Braide, 1981). The disease was first described in Cote d’ Ivoire, West Africa by Gargadennec and Lalanne in 1942. The disease is caused by Peste des petit ruminants virus (PPRV) which belongs to the genus Morbillivirus in the family Paramyxoviridae and has only one serotype with four distinct lineages (Barrett et al., 1993). Peste des petit ruminants has been described in the Middle East, South Asia, China and Africa. In Africa, PPR is found in North, East, West and Central Africa. In Kenya, PPR was first suspected in 1992 (FAO, 2008) with further serological reports being made by Wamwayi et al. (1995). Peste des petits ruminants was reported in Turkana, Kenya by 2006 but it was not confirmed and officially reported to OIE until 2007 (Promed, 2007). Other participatory epidemiological studies have indicated that PPR disease was first seen in small ruminant herds by Turkana herders of North Turkana in 2005 (Bett et al., 2008). Prior to the 2007 PPR disease reports in Turkana, little Corresponding author: Kihu S.M., Vetworks Eastern Africa, P.O. Box 10431-00200 Nairobi