First evidence of Peste des Petits Ruminants and Rift Valley Fever viruses in Koure’s Giraffa camelopardalis peralta of Niger Republic.

Résumé

Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) and Rift Valley Fever (RVF) are two known infectious diseases in domestic ruminants. For the control of PPR, an annual vaccination campaign is carried out, while for rift valley fever, there is no applied medical prophylaxis option. In 2016, several outbreak of RVF were reported in Niger in the north-west part of the country. In 1998, the West African giraffe, present in Niger, was put in the red list of the International Nature Conservation Union (INCU) and classified as endangered species. Having an average annual increase rate of 10% together with conservation efforts, the giraffe population increases from 56 individuals in 1996 to 607 in 2017(Halilou & Laouel, 2018). In order to reduce the pressure of this specie on its current habitat, a translocation operation was conducted in November 2018 where ten (10) individuals were transferred from Kouré to the Gadebédji’s Biosphere Reserve. The objective of this study is to investigate the circulation of RVF and PPR viruses in those individuals before their transfer to the new site. No serologic and clinical reports of PPRV and RVFinfection in wildlife was reported in Niger, though seropositivity was recorded in Uganda, Ethiopia, and other West and Central African countries (LaBeaud et al., 2011; Mahapatra et al., 2015; Beechler et al., 2015; Leylabadlo et al., 2016).