Gerda Dullaart
The KwaZulu-Natal Conservation Service this week launched a R1,3-million strategy to combat tuberculosis in buffalo that doesn’t entail killing the animals in order to test them for the disease.
The service expressed its concern about the threat of buffalo TBspreading to cattle in neighbouring areas, and from there to humans.
For the past 20 years the national government has spent more than R100-million on controlling the disease on commercial cattle farms. But on communal farms there is far less control, and it is suspected that countless cases of TB among the rural people of KwaZulu-Natal are actually bovine TB, spread to humans by unpasteurised milk.
“We are sitting on a time bomb,” says Dave Cooper, KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service veterinarian and member of the national TB study group.
The new testing method, which will be tried in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park in northern KwaZulu-Natal, has been dubbed the “creepy crawly” method.
The whole buffalo population in the park – estimated number about 4 500 – will be tested over the next three to five years, and only infected animals will be destroyed.
Until now it has been necessary to kill the animals before testing them. There is no cure for the disease in buffalo, and they do not develop immunity to it.
A test previously used on cattle has been modified to work on the buffalo.
The animals will be driven into temporary bomas in the field and sedated with a morphine-based anaesthetic. They will then be tagged and blood samples will be taken.
Then comes the revolutionary part: the buffalo will be injected with a purified protein derivative of bovine TB. After three days the swellings around the injections will be analysed for antibodies, the presence of which indicates TB.
TB-free buffalo will be released. The condemned will be kept in the bomas for a week, because their metabolisms have to break down the sedative before they are culled if the meat is to be utilised. TB only affects the brain and the lungs. After thorough inspection, the meat will be donated or sold.
Whole herds of buffalo have been culled in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park since it was discovered in 1997 that the incidence of the disease is higher than 40% in some parts of the park.
“The scary thing about TB is that it definitely affects other species. Lions pick it up quickly because they prey on buffalo,” says Cooper.
Conservator Tim Dale is especially concerned that TB will eventually prevent movement of animals from reserve to reserve. The park supplies animals to game reserves all over Africa, and has regenerated the world’s entire rhino population from virtually nothing over the past 30 years.
“Our role is threatened,” says Dale. “There is already difficulty exporting rhino from the park to Namibia and Britain because of TB.”