Abstract:
Brucellosis poses serious public health implications and substantial economic losses in pastoral rural settings in South Sudan. In humans, brucellosis is almost always originating from
animals. Current literature provides scant data regarding the seroprevalence of brucellosis
in South Sudan. This cross-sectional study investigates the seroprevalence of brucellosis
among the pastoral community and livestock and identifies risk factors for the disease from
two Counties, Terekeka and Juba in Central Equatoria State (CES), South Sudan.
Methodology
A total of 986 sera; from humans (n = 143), cattle (n = 478), sheep (n = 86), and goats (n =
279) were randomly collected from 17 cattle camps in CES. Sera for the humans, cattle and
goats were screened for Brucella-specific antibodies using Rose Bengal plate test (RBPT)
and further confirmed by competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (c-ELISA) in
series due to the cost of testing. All the sera from sheep were tested in parallel using RBPT
and c-ELISA as the sheep samples were few and were all tested negative on the RBPT. A
camp was considered positive when at least one animal of either species tested positive on
the c-ELISA. A structured questionnaire was used to collect information on potential individual and herd level risk factors. Univariate analysis using binary logistic regression with a
confidence interval of 95% at a p-value of � 0.05 was used to identify the association
between the potential individual risk factors and Brucella seropositivity. The investigated
