 Alright, good afternoon. Welcome to the afternoon session. My name is to be Mwangi I am a professor of new year the invite you of Nairobi and Washington State University. And this afternoon you have got lined up really nice presentations begin with one by a good friend of mine. Bernard, wonder, Dr. Bernard, wonder from National Museums of Kenya. He has nearly 20 years of working in the National Museums of Kenya, 19 years to be exact. And today speaking to us on the Crimean Congo hemorrhage hemorrhagic fever virus in humans animals and ticks in Kenya. Please. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon. I think I'm privileged to talk to you and you have a little bit of more energy. The name of sugar after lunch. I will make this presentation very brief. Thanks, Dr. to me for inviting me. This work I'm going to present is the portion I'm presenting is a small bit of it. I'm interested in tracking Crimean Congo hemorrhage fever virus in Kenya. In all possible places we can get it animals in the wild animals at home, as well as human beings. Right. What I'm going to present is a quick screen on based on serology. We are taking on cattle and buffalo. This work is a collaborative work. The National Museums of Kenya. Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya Wildlife Research and Training Institute. University of Umea in Sweden. And now we are getting new collaborators from Spain. I need to repeat this that we are presenting a serological data, but in the background we are analyzing and we are conducting PCR to see whether we can have confirmation from all the samples that we have. We are also combining samples that we have collected over the years, plus freshly collected samples in the wild. I will just call it Crimean Congo virus, but the extended name is Crimean Congo hemorrhage fever virus that is the actual name that for ease of communication. So Crimean Congo virus, and I hope you'll be able to catch me on that. Well, it's not very new because the first detection and discovery was very back in 1936, but it has a sporadic outbreaks. And they have potential to cause common infections in hospitals and case fatality rate is very high, ranging from 10 to 50%. If this is moderated, probably you'll get an average of 30. So it's as little as many of the hemorrhage fever viruses, which are sporadically reoccur in the continent of Africa. The previous reports in the country in Kenya include PCR confirmation of a fatal case in western Kenya way back in 2000, but the several studies in Kenya that have documented that have conducted surveillance, both in human beings and wildlife, as well as in ticks. Despite all these studies from way back to 1936, hemorrhage fever is not well explained in terms of how prevalent it is within livestock, wildlife, and even human beings. Even though this caution that was provided by the Ministry of Health that doctors need to be aware when they admit patients that that show tendencies of hemorrhage. This can set off to be an outbreak within the hospital and it would be difficult to get rid of. And with that high case fatality rate of 40, you can be sure even patient that could be saved, could go down with this virus. In this study, we aimed at conducting the set of prevalence in management system that we thought could influence. the circulation, as well as outbreak in human beings. So we looked at areas where wildlife are the main lunges system like Naku National Park, and livestock are excluded. Human beings only go there as visitors or managers, as well as closed system with a bit of livestock, and completely livestock go in and out. And this is what we got. I have some acronyms there which I'll explain. The batch on the left is a bit exaggerated because the samples were collected over eight years, so we don't pay too much attention to it. We have to, I'm throwing question in depicting it, but the LNNP is the Liknakuru, which is closed. There is no livestock going in there, and we found very high set of prevalence rate of criminal Congo among the buffalos. In all Pajeta, which is a conservancy and closed, they have livestock as well as wildlife. We found that the set of prevalence of criminal Congo among livestock was moderate, but buffalos very low. In Masaimara, the set of prevalence, moderate, you can call moderate, when we look at just the cattle, but when you look at the buffalos, it was lower. I'll give you the actual figures here, and I'll probably explain in my next three slides. We looked at buffalos on their own, and we looked at cattle on their own first, and then we made comparisons, and we saw that where there are no livestock, set of prevalence of criminal Congo among buffalos, very, very high. Where we have cattle mixing with the buffalos, the figure comes down significantly, but among the cattle, it shoots high. Whether it is in a closed or semi-closed, closed here means closed for livestock and human beings. In Likipia, where all Pajeta is, we did a small experiment, so one off sampling of cattle outside the conservancy among the communities, and we found that the percentage of those tested positive or showing exposure were low among the cattle, and of course, outside, we didn't get any buffalos to sample and compare. So in conclusion, we found that the exposure of cattle and livestock in all the management systems is high, particularly areas where livestock, like in Masaimara, where livestock go into the park, come out, and different livestock keepers mix. This is different from where we have got one management system managing both livestock and wildlife in all Pajeta, like all Pajeta. In all Pajeta, the conservancy is fenced off, and the hearts of cattle within the property remain constant. They don't mix with those that are outside the conservancy area. The buffalos, or wildlife in general, mix very freely with the livestock, and we think the vector community that bites both livestock and wildlife are the same. The effect of land use system of keeping wildlife together with livestock helps to maintain Crimean Congo, and this is by show of seroprevalence, which is a measure of exposure. Unfortunately, this conference has come too soon before I could get the PCR data, but of course this is an indication that Crimean Congo virus is circulating and maintained within both livestock and wildlife. We also do not have yet the data for human beings, the livestock handlers within the areas where we sampled, so we don't know what the picture will be, but for sure there is clear risk of transmission between livestock and wildlife, as well as human being, particularly those that are handling. A previous study in Wajia in 2013 showed that people who handle camels, goat, sheep, but to a less extent cattle are exposed. The seroprevalence was as high as 40% in some cases in Wajia, but this is way back in 2013, which is nearly a decade. We like to see this kind of study in Masaimara where some cattle keepers come from very far and go into the wildlife area, graze and live. Whether they pick and drop the virus, we are not sure, but I think that will become clear, which are some of the gaps our study is addressing in the next steps. We think the elevated exposure rates of buffalo in Leknakuru National Park is a unique event because the buffaloes don't mix with livestock in the park. Whereas the risk of transmitting it to human beings is very low, except for those who are going for picnics who disembark from their vehicles and probably take a walk in the park and therefore get exposed to the ticks. We think that's very low, but the high prevalence rate of 90% of exposure in Leknakuru requires more investigation to see whether that exposure shows actual outbreak among the buffaloes or it was just a historical exposure. Probably a point to note as I wind up is that among the cattle we found that younger, those that are two years and lower were less exposed to the virus than the adult cows. The difference was as high as 50% because of time I think I would like to just thank all those supported us, particularly the Swedish Council for Research that are supporting the four institutions to collaborate, develop capacities to conduct research on neglected hemorrhagic fever pathogens that are potential to spread from human beings from wildlife to livestock and human beings. I particularly thank also my colleagues from Meru University in the wildlife service. And of course, I thank the organizers for bringing me in here. I hope we could meet again when I have human and other wildlife data which we are currently analyzing. I hope I've made it in a good time. Yes, actually you have a few minutes that you can ask a few one or two questions. So many thanks for your presentation Bernard. I didn't know though like part of your slideshow, the zero prevalence among the wildlife that I include systems appear to be much higher than what you have got. Did I get it right or wrong? Did I get it right that have a higher zero prevalence in areas that have only wildlife compared to where you have cattle and what would be the reason for that? Are cattle serving as a dilution factor for zero prevalence or what? That was my ending point that the elevated high exposure rate of Crimean Congo among the buffaloes. I'm just sure the data on buffaloes is uniquely high. So, and I think it could be right that we can impute the theory of dilution effect that livestock would dilute the extremities of exposure. But we have to throw caution because this is exposure we're measuring. Once we get the PCR data we want to know the active infections because exposure shows that we were looking at a case where some of our samples were collected way back in 2016 and others were collected in 2019. So we have to throw caution in interpreting the data but it's true that could be cattle, could be doing what you call dilution effect. Or maybe just sample older buffaloes. That's possible. One other question ticks. I know the title indicates also, you know, infection in ticks but I didn't see any detail on that is that something you should be expecting. Sure, yeah, I was supposed to give you data also ticks. I'm on hyaloma ticks, but the data is not complete. So I didn't want to have cook that this honorable meeting with the tick data tick and human data is is still in the kitchen. All right, there might be maybe one question from the audience. Thank you so much, Bernard we have a question from the participants online. The world congratulated you for a very interesting presentation and asks, do you have any information on how ticks are managed by livestock only can owning communities in your study areas, particularly the mass I'm our. Thank you. Yeah, we never conducted the household interviews and how ticks managed among the farmers. We know for sure that different farmers have different ways of managing ticks, some of them would go for for commercialized services of people who come and spray. And some pay a little attention to this and this this this mix of some are attending to tick some don't attend to ticks is part of the reason why we think in massimara the prevalence among cattle was a little bit higher compared to where they don't mix the. The heads of cattle are kept in an enclosed enclosed property and they don't mix with the communities who would not necessarily control ticks. So ticks are being controlled in different ways. And in massimara particularly if each farmer would have different intensity of management of ticks.