Myiasis affects thousands of animals

The General Department for Animal Resources (GDAR) at Yemen’s Ministry of Agriculture has warned that more than 8,000 livestock in three of the country’s provinces have been affected by myiasis, a disease by which human or animal tissue is infested with fly larvae or maggots.

[Read this report in Arabic]

The potentially fatal disease has been found in 838 villages in Saada and Hajjah provinces and at least five villages in al-Hudeidah province in north-west Yemen since it first appeared in the country in December 2007, GDAR added.

According to Ghaleb al-Eryani, director-general of GDAR, there are 15 million sheep, 1.4 million cattle and 250,000 camels in Yemen. If the disease is not brought under control, he said, the initial economic loss Yemen might face is 22 billion riyals [about US$111 million] in terms of livestock.

Mohammed al-Hayyal, head of GDAR’s Myiasis Combating National Team, told IRIN on 1 March that his department was preparing to send 24 teams to al-Hudeidah Governorate, in western Yemen, five teams to Saada and three to Hajjah to support GDAR teams already there.

There are currently 12 teams in Saada and the same number in Hajjah. Each team consists of a vehicle, an insecticide sprayer, a veterinary officer and an assistant. The teams give animals anti-parasite medicines and spray parasiticides in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading.

“So far, the number of affected animals has reached 8,500. The teams have sprayed 120,000 animals and 9,000 barns in Saada and Hajjah,” al-Hayyal said, adding that there were no means of monitoring the disease and the extent of its spread.

State of emergency

In al-Hudeidah Governorate, where the disease has spread to more than five villages, officials at Tehama Development Authority (TDA), a government body there, have declared a state of emergency because the province is home to almost half the whole country's livestock.

Photo: Google Maps

A map of Yemen highighting Saada, Hajjah and al-Hudeidah provinces

Saeed Abdul-Wasei, an information officer at TDA, told IRIN on 2 March that 25 sheep died over the past few days in Tehama, but he could not give the exact number of infected animals.

“Tehama region has 40 percent of Yemen’s livestock. If there is no action to combat the disease, it will be disastrous,” he said, adding that TDA is on high alert and is combating the disease in coordination with GDAR.

“Efforts are really being made to prevent the spread of the disease. We are raising awareness among locals to observe, combat and prevent the spread of the disease. The TDA has 57 awareness centres,” Abdul-Wasei said.

What is myiasis?

Myiasis is widespread in the tropics and subtropics of Africa and the Americas, but occurs with significantly less frequency in most other areas of the world. The disease is also known as `fly-strike’, `fly-blown’ or `New World’.

Experts at GDAR said that in Yemen the disease is caused by a fly known as screwworm or `New World’ (because of its prevalence in the tropics) - a species of parasitic fly whose maggots eat the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, including humans. The screwworm fly is about twice the size of a regular house fly. It is greenish-blue in colour and has large reddish-orange eyes.

“The fly that causes this disease can fly a long distance. It can affect all wild animals, including dogs, but only livestock animals can be vaccinated against the disease,” Abdullah al-Maqtari, a specialist at GDAR, said, adding that the screwworm fly becomes particularly active when the climate it is hot and humid, and therefore would become harder to control with the onset of summer.

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