Sampling sheep and goats in Rift Valley
(University of Minnesota public health students are writing about their experiences abroad this summer.)
By Alina Evans
Writing from Kenya
We just got back from a week in the Rift Valley sampling sheep and goats (over 400 samples). The second farm we went to had zebras and elands living in the sheep pastures! They had camels there too! I really like camels!
Both farms had a lot of sick animals. One of the sheep died while we were on the farm and in the necropsy almost all of the organs were hemorrhagic. There was also an abortion while we were there. So it will be interesting to see if its Rift Valley, everything is right and the other differentials don't fit as nicely - hopefully we'll know soon. The sheep have to be in the pasture from 9-4. So we have to do our sampling from 6-9am and 4-6pm. We were leaving the hotel at 5am and getting back around 9pm to then start processing the samples... At lunch we would buy a live chicken and then go
find somewhere to cook it. It usually involved going to town and finding a restaurant that would let us slaughter it in their backyard! We are going back up to Nakuru area to sample sheep from local farms on weds or Thursday - they are having abortion storms.
We took a trip up to the hospital where we will conduct our human project. The ophthalmology clinic has one part-time ophthalmologist and there were over 30 people in the waiting room! The ophthalmologist said that she had 18 surgeries scheduled for the next day! We had to delay the start of our project by another week (administrative hold-ups at the ministry here and at CDC), so we will go out to a National Reserve and sample ducks for Avain Influenza! Mindy and I are really excited about spending 5 days with wildlife vets here!