Abstract
Brucellosis is a great concern for dairy farming globally including in Bangladesh. It is also an important zoonosis having public health significance. The seroprevalence, risk factors, and species of Brucella prevalent in Bangladesh are known to large extent but the military dairy farms are totally unknown. The objective of the current work was to determine the Sero-molecular prevalence, identify risk factors, detect Brucella species, and assess workers’ knowledge, awareness, and practices relevant to the transmission of brucellosis and itspublic health importance in Military Dairy Farms of Bangladesh. Serum and milk samples from 1003 lactating dairy cows of eight military dairy farms and 715 serum samples of dairy farm workers and hospital patients were collected during the 36 months from 2017 to 2020. Five different commercial diagnostic test kits were used to detect the prevalence of Brucella infection for testing all the collected sera and milk samples. Multivariable logistic regressions were used to identify important risk factors for brucellosis. The overall 2.39% seroprevalence of brucellosis was recorded with all the CFT, SAT, and ELISA assays and 3.09% with RBT, whereas only 0.20% of tested milk samples showed positive with MRT in the lactating dairy cows. The result also showed that Out of 715 tested human sera, only 4 (0.5%) milker’s sera were positive for RBT with a 95% confidence interval of 0.2 to 1.5. Brucellosis was also significantly higher in cows that calved more than three times odds ratio [OR] =3.7; (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.5-9.1) than those calved one to two times. The odds of brucellosis were about 43 times higher (OR = 42.9; (95% confidence interval [CI]: 10.7- 100.107) in aborted cows than in non-aborted cows. This study showed that 55.4% had adequate knowledge about brucellosis as a human disease. Results suggest that B. abortus was endemic and first time identified as human brucellosis in occupationally exposed military dairy farm workers in Bangladesh. The risk factors identified in this study would help to prevent, control, and eradication of brucellosis not only in eight military dairy farms but also in other dairy industries in Bangladesh.
