Contagious caprine pleuropneumonia, commonly abbreviated CCPP, is caused by the bacterium Mycoplasma capricolum subsp. capripneumoniae, often shortened to Mccp. The organism targets the lungs and chest cavity of goats and, less dramatically, sheep, producing a severe fibrinous pleuropneumonia that can sweep through a flock with devastating speed. Under outbreak conditions, morbidity can reach one hundred percent of susceptible animals, and mortality has been recorded at rates between eighty and one hundred percent. The disease is considered a classical transboundary animal disease, spreading across borders with the movement of live animals, and it imposes heavy economic costs through deaths, reduced meat and milk output, treatment expenses, and restrictions on trade in small ruminants and their products. Although the presence of CCPP has long been suspected in Ethiopia, particularly in regions bordering Sudan and Kenya, comprehensive data from many districts have remained scarce, leaving national control strategies built on incomplete maps of where the pathogen circulates.

To address one of those gaps, researchers led by Amanuel Balemi Lemecha, working with colleagues at Ambo University and the Animal Health Institute, carried out a seroepidemiological investigation between November 2022 and September 2023 in three districts of West Shewa Zone: Dandi, Ejere, and Meta Robi. The zone, whose administrative capital Ambo lies about 114 kilometers west of Addis Ababa, supports a large small ruminant population managed predominantly under mixed crop-livestock systems, in which sheep and goats graze communal lands together and share overnight shelters. The team selected the districts purposively based on livestock market activity, animal movement patterns, and small ruminant production potential, then chose five peasant associations within each district and sampled individual animals randomly from households.

The study population consisted of 433 animals, comprising 284 goats and 149 sheep, all older than six months, apparently healthy at sampling, and with no history of CCPP vaccination during the preceding two years, a fact verified against official district veterinary records and owner reports. From each animal, the researchers collected five to seven milliliters of blood from the jugular vein, allowed the samples to clot overnight, separated the serum, and stored it at minus twenty degrees Celsius until analysis. Antibodies against Mccp were detected using a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, or c-ELISA, performed at the Animal Health Institute with a commercial kit recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization’s world reference center for CCPP. The assay, which boasts a specificity of 99.9 percent, works by measuring the percentage of inhibition of a monoclonal antibody’s binding to Mccp antigen coated on microplate wells; samples showing inhibition of fifty-five percent or greater were classified as positive.

The results revealed an overall seroprevalence of 19.4 percent, meaning 84 of the 433 animals had been exposed to the pathogen at some point. The species difference was striking. Goats recorded a seroprevalence of 26.8 percent, a figure that sits close to the national pooled estimate of 25.7 percent derived from a previous meta-analysis of Ethiopian studies, while sheep showed only 5.4 percent, consistent with the well-documented pattern in which goats are the primary and most susceptible host and sheep frequently serve as subclinical or spillover hosts that can nonetheless carry the organism. Seroprevalence also climbed with flock size, rising from 13.3 percent in small flocks of one to ten animals, to 16.9 percent in medium flocks of eleven to twenty, and reaching 30 percent in flocks exceeding twenty head. Geographically, the lowland district of Meta Robi recorded the highest seropositivity at 25.6 percent, compared with lower figures in the midland district of Dandi and the highland district of Ejere, a gradient the authors attribute in part to ecological differences and the more frequent livestock movement that seasonal shortages of feed and water impose on lowland herds.

To identify which factors independently predicted infection, the researchers applied univariable and multivariable logistic regression, retaining variables with a p-value below 0.25 in the initial screen and checking for multicollinearity before fitting the final model, whose calibration was confirmed by a non-significant Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test. Three risk factors emerged as significant. Species was the strongest: goats had roughly five and a half times the odds of seropositivity compared with sheep, with an adjusted odds ratio of 5.5 and a 95 percent confidence interval spanning 2.523 to 12.202. Management system mattered as well, with animals kept under extensive systems, in which flocks graze and browse freely and mix with neighboring herds, showing about 2.8 times the odds of infection relative to intensively housed animals. Finally, the origin of the animal proved decisive: goats and sheep purchased from markets were approximately 2.7 times more likely to be seropositive than animals born within the flock, a pattern consistent with newly acquired animals acting as asymptomatic carriers or succumbing to infection after the stress of transport and adaptation suppresses their immunity.

While the laboratory work was underway, the team administered a semi-structured questionnaire to 110 randomly selected small ruminant owners across the three districts, conducting interviews in the local language, Afan Oromo, after obtaining verbal informed consent and pretesting the instrument on five percent of the sample size in a neighboring agro-ecologically similar area. The demographic picture was dominated by farming households, with about eighty percent of respondents identifying as farmers and nearly four in five of those being male. When asked to rank the most common diseases of their sheep and goats, respondents placed peste des petits ruminants first at thirty percent, followed by orf at 28.2 percent, with CCPP third at twenty percent, suggesting the disease registers as a familiar clinical syndrome even where its formal identity does not.

The awareness data, however, were sobering. About 91.8 percent of respondents reported having never heard of CCPP by name, and 87.3 percent said they do not vaccinate their animals against it. The researchers suggest this disconnect arises partly from the use of generic local descriptors for respiratory illness, which masks the specific pathogen. In Meta Robi and Dandi, farmers locally recognize the syndrome as Michi Somba, meaning a disease that affects the lung, echoing the diversity of vernacular names documented elsewhere in Ethiopia, including Sombesa in Fentale, Sompo in Hammer and Benna-Tsemay, and Zom in Gambella. Despite the absence of consistent nomenclature, a majority of farmers could recognize the disease from its clinical signs: 62.7 percent reported that it causes death and spreads from animal to animal, and 61.8 percent identified the introduction of new animals from markets as a source of transmission. Husbandry practices amplify the risk, with 80.9 percent of respondents practicing communal watering and feeding and routinely managing sheep and goats together, facilitating close interspecies contact. On the treatment side, ninety percent of farmers use modern veterinary drugs, while only 6.4 percent rely on traditional remedies, but 78.5 percent cited a lack of drugs and vaccines as the principal barrier to preventing or treating disease in their flocks.

The authors acknowledge limitations, including the restriction of the study to three districts, the potential for recall and social desirability bias in the questionnaire responses, and the absence of molecular characterization of the circulating Mccp strains. Even so, the study delivers the first baseline seroprevalence data for CCPP in West Shewa Zone and confirms that the pathogen is firmly entrenched there. The researchers recommend strengthening disease surveillance, implementing targeted vaccination programs, quarantining newly purchased animals before they join flocks, and improving farmer education so that awareness of the disease catches up with its biological footprint. Future work incorporating PCR and bacterial sequencing, they note, will be essential to unravel the transmission dynamics of Mccp in the region and to design control interventions that are both context-specific and sustainable for the smallholder systems on which millions of Ethiopian households depend.

Subject of Research: Seroepidemiology of contagious caprine pleuropneumonia and farmers' awareness in West Shewa Zone, Ethiopia

Article Title: Seroepidemiology of contagious caprine pleuropneumonia (CCPP) and farmers’ awareness and management practices in selected districts of West Shewa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia

Article References: Lemecha, A. B., Bune, W. M., Ogeto, A. B., & Dinbiso, T. D. (2026). Seroepidemiology of contagious caprine pleuropneumonia (CCPP) and farmers’ awareness and management practices in selected districts of West Shewa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. Discover Animals, 3(1), Article 82. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44338-026-00246-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44338-026-00246-3

Keywords: CCPP, Mycoplasma capricolum subsp. capripneumoniae, seroprevalence, goats, sheep, Ethiopia, small ruminants, risk factors, c-ELISA, farmers' awareness, vaccination, West Shewa Zone