A new plan to control brucellosis in Iraq is being implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) following recent reports of infection in animals. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is supervising the operation.

"The situation is not out of control yet but the disease exists in Iraq and we hope to control it before there is an outbreak. We registered 6,775 infected cattle in 2004 but the number could be four or five times higher," the director of animal health in the MoA, Dr Basem Najim, told IRIN in Baghdad.

The existing data was collected randomly in the country and there are no accurate figures on the precise scale of the problem at present.

The last survey of brucellosis infection in Iraq was carried out by the MoA between 1994 and 2004. Of a total population of 18 million sheep and goats it found 12 percent of goats and 10 percent of sheep to be infected.

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Source: Reuters, IRIN
May 10, 2005

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