Introduction
For over 100 years, since Robert Koch discovered the causative agent in 1882, human tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains a major global public health threat.
In recent times, the problem posed by bovine TB (BTB) became of increasing concern to public health officials. Mycobacterium bovis, of which cattle is the primary maintenance host, is not easily differentiated from M. tuberculosis, as both species belong to the genetically related M. tuberculosis complex (MTC) (Brosh et al. 2002). What is more concerning is that M. bovis also infects humans, particularly those who consume unpasteurized dairy products and live in close contact with infected cattle (Cosivi et al. 1998; Thoen et al. 2009), hence the challenge of zoonotic TB (zTB). Mycobacterium bovis was hitherto believed to be transmitted only from cattle to humans (Ayele et al. 2004), but cases of human-to- human transmission via the pulmonary route have been reported recently (Gibson et al. 2004; LoBue et al. 2004; Evans et al. 2007; Thoen and LoBue 2007; Sunder et al. 2009; Etchechoury et al. 2010; Godreuil et al. 2010; Adesokan et al. 2012; Torres-Gonzalez et al. 2013).Author “Thoen” was deceased at the time of publication.
S. I. B. Cadmus (*)
University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
P. I. Fujiwara
International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD), Paris, France e-mail: Pfujiwara@theunion.org
J. A. Shere
United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA
e-mail: Jack.A.Shere@aphis.usda.gov
B. Kaplan
One Health Initiative, Sarasota, FL, USA
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 41
A. B. Dibaba et al. (eds.), Tuberculosis in Animals: An African Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18690-6_4
The persistence of M. bovis at various prevalences in cattle in countries, such as in Mexico (13.8%) (Perez-Guerrero et al. 2008), Uganda (7%) (Oloya et al. 2008), Nigeria (5%) (Cadmus et al. 2006), the UK (0.17-0.5%) (Stone et al. 2012), France (0.5-2%) (Mignard et al. 2006), The Netherlands (1.4%) (Majoor et al. 2011), and most African countries where dairy products are generally not pasteurized or heat- treated, creates ongoing challenges to prevent zoonotic TB. Significantly, M. bovis infection has recently been categorized as an important neglected disease, affecting the livelihoods mostly of poor and marginalized communities, with increasing zoonotic implications (Hlavsa et al. 2008; Rodwell et al. 2008) and with serious ecological implications as the infection spreads between livestock, wildlife, and humans at the interface between them (Kriek 2014).
4.2
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