Immunisation against East Coast Fever: Possible ways of reducing costs

Abstract

East Coast fever (ECF) is lymphoproliferative disease of cattle caused by protozoan parasite, Theileria parva (Theiler, 1904) and ransmittes transtafially by a three-host tick, Rhipicephalus appendiculatus (Irvin and Morrison, 1987). Due to its high mortality and morbidity rates (Irvin and Morrison, 1987), the high costs of controlling the vector rick (Kariuki, 1990) and the high cost of the chemotherapeutic drugs (Mutugi, 1988), it is of major economic importance (Mukhebi, 1992).