Epidemiologic survey and serodiagnosis of contagious agalactia of small ruminants in Eastern Algeria

Contagious agalactia is largely present all over the world and affects most of the African countries. It plays an important economic role in terms of subsequent milk and meat losses. One third of the 15 millions of sheep living in Algeria is present in the Eastern regions. A survey was conducted in order to confirm the existence of the disease and to evaluate the prevalence. A total of 372 sera and 80 milk samples was collected from suspected herds i.e. herds presenting either mastitis and arthritis symptoms or mastitis and keratitis symptoms. It was possible using several serological tests to detect the positive animals and to compare the specificity and sensitivity of the tests.