Brucellosis represents a public health problem in Egypt. This disease is endemic in some governorates in which outbreaks were reported every year among animals and some sporadic human cases or even outbreaks were also reported. Fore these reasons this study was conducted to clarify the current status of brucellosis problem in Egypt and to provide the adequate data needed for occupational, veterinary and community health actions for management of this problem.
The relevant data as regards to brucellosis in animals and human population (from 1983 through 1987) in Egypt were extracted mainly from the computerized data base, microfilms, documents and reports at the General Organization for Veterinary Service, Ministry of Agriculture and the Governorate’s Veterinary laboratories. Other reliable sources e.g. the annual veterinary congress proceedings and the periodicals of veterinary association were also reviewed.
The whole country was divided geographically into 4-main sectors, each one contains more than one governorate as follows; 1) Cairo and El-Sharkia, 2) Delta governorates, 3) Upper Egypt governorates 4) Alwxandria and Matroh governorates. The analysis of data pointed to the following main findings. The total number of positive human cases in the previously mentioned sectors were as follow: 25, 51, 64 and 15 respectively. In 1987 the infection rate in the tested animals were as follows: Upper Egypt 1.97% Cairo and El-Sharkia 1.12%, Delta sector 0.66% and Alexandria and Matroh 0.44% and there is a positive correlation between the infection rate among animals and the positive human cases (r =0.954, P < 0.05).
A pilot sero-epidemiological study was carried out by the authors during 1991 upon a randomly selected veterinarian group revealed that 70.8% of examined group was positive to brucella by tube agglutination test (tire > 1180).
In conclusion, brucellosis represented a significant community health problem in our country. The above mentioned figures, undersimates the magnitude of the problem. The actual situation as well as control and preventive measures needs more organized efforts from different bodies.
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