Seropositivity in animals and risk of occupational brucellosis among abattoirs personnel associated with poor work practices and absence of safety policy in Egypt

ABSTRACT

Background Occupational hazards are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among abattoirs personnel and animal workers. These hazards result from direct or indirect exposure to potential infection and several distressing events during routine procedures.

Objectives To serologically investigate the potential occupational brucellosis hazard at Egyptian abattoirs. To provide an insight on the needed biosafety practices that should be implemented to mitigate the spread of occupational brucellosis among abattoir workers.

Methods Two hundred and thirty (n = 230) blood samples were collected from animals in two Egyptian abattoirs. The rose Bengal test was used to evaluate the seroprevalence of Brucella in abattoir animals. A questionnaire was distributed among abattoir personnel to address biosafety gaps and deficiencies as a cause of occupational brucellosis.

Results The overall seroprevalence of Brucella using the rose Bengal test was 75.2% in the two targeted abattoirs. It was obvious that there are gaps of malpractices and inconvenient behavior among individuals of the targeted community.

Conclusions The current findings reveal the missing role of concerned authorities and lack of written safety policy. The data highlights the need for further research, including isolation and characterization of the causative agents, and reliable epidemiological studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Occupational Brucellosis
• abattoirs
• rose Bengal
• safety

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Society for Microbiology [biosafety/biosecurity research program in Egypt (2016)].