Central Asia:
Afghanistan: PPR are endemic throughout Afghanistan (Azizi and Farid, 2010). PPR is a transboundary disease of major importance for the government in a country where 75% of the population are rural and depend on animals and animal products for their livelihoods. The majority of the country’s 30 million sheep and goats are owned by Kuchi nomadic pastoralists, and these livestock are their most important economic asset. Their migratory routes traverse vast areas of the countryside, with periodic stops at animal markets, summer pastures, and in settled villages during the winter. The Kuchi pastoralists were identified as the primary target group for regional epidemiology of PPRV because their nomadic way of life and animal movements mean that the potential for infectious disease spread is high inside countries and to neighbor countries particularly to Pakistan and Tajikistan. In 2015, the General Directorate of Animal Health and Production of the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) initiated Afghanistan’s formal programme for PPR control and eradication. It did so in collaboration with FAO, the implementing organization, funded by the Government of Japan. The programme was aligned with the OIE/FAO Global Strategy for the Control and Eradication of PPR (PPR–GCES), and the objective of the intervention was to take the country to Stage 2 of the GCES pathway.
In April 2016, at the Regional Roadmap meeting in Nepal, Afghanistan qualified as being in Stage 1, and was carrying out many Stage 1 and Stage 2 activities of the GCES progressive pathway. After a successful pilot project in 2015, which targeted 270,000 small ruminants belonging to the Kuchi community in three provinces, the programme has continued to expand each year. In 2018, the total number of animals vaccinated since 2015 were expected to reach 12.5 million sheep and goats, all belonging to the Kuchi community and throughout all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. In addition to the targeted vaccination of animals, 3,004 serum samples (2015 to 2017) were collected pre- and post-vaccination, which were submitted to the Central Veterinary Diagnostic and Research Laboratory for testing and analysis, with another 3,000 samples were planned to take in 2018 (Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock, Kabul, Afghanistan). Afghanistan is war affected country having lack of advanced diagnostic tools and research institutions so scare data is available on PPR in Afghanistan, however there is animal movement from Afghanistan to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces of Pakistan; hence it is observed in these provinces that PPR are reported in large scale by Pakistani veterinarians and researches (Personal Observation). So it is necessary to investigate PPR from grass root and to know the epidemiology of disease for better contribution in the region.
Mongolia: The 2016–2017 introduction of PPRV into livestock in Mongolia was followed by mass mortality of the critically endangered Mongolian saiga antelope and other rare wild ungulates (Pruvot et al., 2020). In the fall of 2016, an outbreak of PPRV among domestic sheep and goats in western Mongolia was confirmed, probably originating from uncontrolled transboundary livestock movements (Shatar et al., 2017; Ts Uuganbayar et al., 2017). In total, 83,889 small ruminants from 1,081 households were reportedly affected by PPR in 14 soums (districts) of 3 aimags (provinces), of which 12,976 small ruminants died (overall case-fatality risk 15.5%) (FAO, 2019). After this initial outbreak, control measures included vaccination of 4,632,200 sheep and 5,800,318 goats in and around the outbreak area in October 2016. Although the vaccination campaign successfully curbed the epidemic in livestock, on December 27, 2016, deaths among the Mongolian saiga antelope (subspeciesSaiga tatarica mongolica ) from PPRV infection were confirmed; later, deaths from PPRV infection of Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica ) and goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa ) were also confirmed (Young et al., 2010). In the following months, thousands of critically endangered Mongolian saiga died.
The Mongolian saiga antelope (hereafter saiga) is a nomadic antelope that now occupies <20% of its historic range in 2 provinces of Mongolia (Khovd and Gobi-Altai), representing 36,000 km2 of desert steppe bordered by high mountain ranges, lakes, and sand dunes (Young et al., 2010). The saiga range partially overlaps that of mountain ungulates, including Siberian ibex, Argali sheep (Ovis ammon ), and other plains ungulates such as goitered gazelle and Mongolian gazelle (Procapra gutturosa ). It is also dominated by livestock; >1.5 million sheep and goats in the 8 soums overlapping the saiga range (Livestock census, 2016) are seasonally grazed over both mountain and desert steppe areas (Lkhagvadorj et al., 2013). PPRV outbreak mapping suggested that wildlife may have been infected earlier (possibly July 2016) than the first confirmed case (December 2016) and that wildlife infections closely followed the timing of the livestock outbreak. The absence of laboratory confirmation of PPRV infection for these initially unconfirmed clusters warrants cautious interpretation, but strong epidemiologic evidence indicates that these suspected cases were part of the same PPRV outbreak. The apparent spatial discontinuity between the 2 outbreak foci supports the hypothesis that the spread of PPR was mainly driven by livestock movement, because the wild mountain ungulates (ibex in the first putative outbreak focus) are relatively resident and unlikely to move long distances across multiple ecotypes. This spatial discontinuity also suggests multiple spillover events from livestock to different wildlife populations, which will require further analysis based on genetic data.
The early onset of PPRV in ibex and the lower and more prolonged incidence of cases in this species (at least until January 2018) are in contrast with the rapid transmission through the saiga population (apparently ceased by June 2017). This contrast in incidence suggests different dynamics of PPRV transmission in the 2 species, influenced by population structure, habitat, and interspecies-intraspecies interactions. Further work, including identification of shared resources between species (e.g., watering points, residual snow patches, and mineral licks), contact rates, and modeling should be conducted to better determine the most likely transmission routes and the respective roles of these wild and domestic ungulates in this multi host system. The probable 5-month delay between the first unconfirmed cases documented and the first confirmation in saiga underscores the value of maintaining operational wildlife health surveillance systems for early detection of wildlife illness and deaths. The spatiotemporal patterns of cases among wildlife were similar to those among livestock affected by the PPRV outbreak, suggesting spillover of virus from livestock at multiple locations and time points and subsequent spread among wild ungulates. Estimates of saiga abundance suggested a population decline of 80%, raising substantial concerns for the species’ survival. Consideration of the entire ungulate community (wild and domestic) is essential for elucidating the epidemiology of PPRV in Mongolia, addressing the threats to wild ungulate conservation, and achieving global PPRV eradication (Pruvot et al., 2020).
Tajikistan: PPR was reported in Tajikistan annually between 2005 and 2014. In 2005, samples from sick and dead goats from farms in Tajikistan demonstrated for the first time the occurrence of PPR in Central Asia (Orynbayev et al., 2005). In 2006, seroprevalence of PPR in small ruminants was reported in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in samples taken from livestock before the vaccination campaign started in the Central Asian region; however, no virus was isolated (Orynbayev et al., 2006). A study conducted by Kwiatek et al. (2007) in which sporadic occurrence of PPR in three districts of Tajikistan is described. The causal strain (PPR Tajikistan) was characterized and the sequence of its N gene was compared with that of 43 other strains isolated since 1968 in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The study demonstrated the value of the N gene as a target in comparing isolates obtained over an extended period of evolution, and that clustering was related to the geographical origin of strains. The local veterinarians described the outbreaks as Pasteurellosis, but later on it was sporadic occurrence of PPR in Tajikistan. The country is deficit in research and innovation so limited work has been reported on PPR; however, the disease is endemic in adjacent neighbor countries like Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. So it is important to include Tajikistan in the regional control and eradication program in future to tear out the root of disease (PPR) from the geo-strategically and socioeconomically deep rooted and interconnected neighbor’s countries in the region including China, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.