Human activities especially in the land use pattern of the farming communities around the NGPs, as cattle grazers encroach on the game park pastures have resulted in an increased incidence of the HP . This risk is higher in the Western region, and as communities continue to move long distances in search of water and pastures in the long dry seasons which have been worsened by the climatic changes in the region, probably accounting for the higher observed DRR over that in the Central region.The current livestock policy has yielded undesirable effects that have continued to undermine the development of the livestock industry . This has led to the proliferation of the HP burden due to the maintenance of chronic carriers within the communities. This would be due to the fact that most farmers find the services costly and would prefer not allowing the veterinarian to visit them coupled with limited supervision of the veterinary drug industry by National Drug Authority ,blueberry grow pot which has led to the development of antibiotic and acaricide resistance in the farming communities which has been induced by the farmers.
The current dilemma facing the food animal drug use is probably due to the lack of appropriate guidance on proper drug usage, medication to use for a particular parasite, probably due to the poor Government policy in the livestock industry , as well as inadequate supervision of the drug industry and ineffective extension service delivery as a result of shortage of professional human resource in these communities. This is further worsened by the poor attitude amongst farmers as they seldom rely on district veterinary laboratories for a diagnosis,to gain a better knowledge on their individual herd challenges before treatment is instituted . This would probably also be due to the few veterinary laboratories in the countryside or the shortage of human resource to operate them at the local Government level, thus leading to the development of this trend in farming practices which have continued to favor the proliferation of HPs within Uganda despite all the various policies in place. This would be due to the seasonal variations as the tick population increases exponentially during the rainy season and logistic regression showed no significant association for the other months except for the Months of December/February . This would probably have been due to the vector epidemiological dynamics as the tick challenge is highest in the rainy seasons, thus the observed increases in the HP challenge, and farmers are often vigilant to intervene and administer treatments.
In the dry season, most of the severely challenged animals died due to increased stress levels from water shortage,hydroponic bucket limited pastures and severe mineral deficiencies in addition to the suppressed immune system as a result of the chronic infections due to HP. Cattle were observed to come down with infection as the dry season intensified and more livestock losses were registered from several farms. Statistical analysis showed there was no significant association between cattle that had been treated and those that had not been treated by the farmers in this study. This would probably be due to the fact that farmer treatments are often ineffective due to their failure to seek professional assistance and adherence to dosage regiments, as well as poor diagnosis of HP conditions with other differential infections within the community as they seldom rely on laboratory diagnosis. The current Government policy regarding veterinary drug usage has contributed to the development of drug resistance in the cattle in several farms, which has led to the proliferation of HP in the rural communities especially. Farmer treatment efficacy on the individual HP was further analyzed and it was discovered infection rate was higher in treated than non-treated groups as shown in Table 8.
This observation was due to the fact that resistance had developed in the Ugandan cattle to the antibiotics that had overly been abused over the years . There was no association between age and the infection of the cattle with HP despite of the fact that majority of infected animals were adults,which would be due to the fact that adult cattle move great distances in search of pastures and the yearlings are kept nearby the farm thus less exposed to the risk of HP.The increasing HP burden is attributed to the farming practices, increased antibiotic and acaricide resistance as well as failure by farmers to adhere to the therapeutical regiment for effective treatment, and epidemiological pattern of the dominant ticks in the region as well as the current government policy. The findings,together with those of previous studies, suggest that eradication of hemo-parasites is not feasible unless there areradical changes implemented, and that current practices are expensive and given the indigenous nature of the breeds, also epidemiologically unsound .