Economics of Bovine Tuberculosis: A One Health Issue 35
Almost all of these workers do not work safely
and they do not protect themselves (Khattak
et al., 2016). These facts suggest that biosafety
measures should be applied for workers in direct
contact with M. bovis hazards from livestock to
abattoirs, and strict routine surveillance for
bovine TB gross visible lesions should be applied
in order to protect workers and, in turn, the con-
sumer from M. bovis exposure.
3.5 The Cost of Bovine TuberculosisThe economics of bovine TB have been summa-
rized by Zinsstag et al. (2006). The authors
emphasized the multifaceted and multi-sector
nature of bovine TB with costs to livestock pro-
duction and animal health, in addition to wild-
life and human health. However most of the
time economic analyses of bovine TB focused
only in one sector: the cost to livestock produc-
tion. In areas where cattle are the only reservoir
host, the control of bovine TB is possible with a
test-and-slaughter policy, whereas in countries
with wildlife reservoirs it is more difficult and
increases the cost of efforts to control bovine TB.
The cost for the control of bovine TB in the UK
decreased from an average of £92 million annu-
ally from 2003 to 2005 (Bovine TB Info, 2016)
to £74 million in 2006 (Mathews et al., 2006)
and increased again to £99 million pounds in
2013 (Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, 2014). A total of £66 million has
been directed for operational, policy and lab
work performed by the animal health services
and the veterinary laboratories agency; in addi-
tion to the payment for private veterinarians for
TB testing, £23.5 million of the total amount is
for cattle compensation costs (Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2013). In
Turkey, the annual socio- economic impact of
bovine TB to the agriculture and health sectors
is estimated to range from US$15 to US$59 mil-
lion (Barwinek and Taylor, 1996), while in
Argentina, the losses due to bovine TB has been
estimated to be US$63 million as reported by
Cosivi et al. (1998).
Very few cost estimates are available for
bovine TB in developing countries. As one of the
first, in Ethiopia the cost of this disease was esti-
mated using a livestock demographic model
(LDPS2, Food and Agriculture Organization)
with some modifications to allow the stochastic
simulation of parameters. It was shown that the
cost of bovine TB in the peri-urban dairy pro-
duction system in areas of Addis Ababa (where
the disease has a higher prevalence) was found
to range from US$0.5 to US$4.9 million in 2005
and in 2011, respectively, whereas in the rural
areas, where bovine TB has a lower prevalence,
the cost of bovine TB ranged from US$75.2
million in 2005 to US$358 million in 2011
(Tschopp et al., 2012). This cost analysis in
Ethiopia concluded that intervention to control
bovine TB in the country would not be cost effec-
tive and was not possible within the current eco-
nomic situation of Ethiopia (Tschopp et al.,
2012).
In addition, a recent review in Ethiopia
identified the test-and-slaughter control strategy
to be financially and logistically unfeasible for
bovine TB. This review also highlighted the
need to explore alternative control options such
as milk pasteurization, meat condemnation in
the abattoirs and animal movement control
(Tschopp and Aseffa, 2016).
The above analysis was not multi-sectorial
in the sense that it considered that the estima-
tion of the full societal cost of bovine TB should
take into account the social and private sectors,
direct and indirect losses to livestock production,
and animal and human health.
Table 3.1 summarizes the different losses
triggered by bovine TB in the human and animal
sectors. The human health sector losses could be
estimated considering the burden of M. bovis on
human TB cases.
Bovine TB is not a disease that receives the
most attention in developing countries, as many
other infectious diseases in animal health are
given higher prioritization (e.g. foot and mouth
disease and peste des petits ruminants). In addi-
tion, as the burden of bovine TB has not yet been
estimated in most of the countries, the stake-
holders are not aware of the real burden of this
disease, especially for human health. In many
developing countries, physicians are not con-
vinced of the added value of working closer with
the animal health sector in order to control this
disease, as they assume the proportion of
M. bovis among human TB patients to be very
low, although this is not yet estimated in many
developing countries (e.g. Morocco), and that