Severe Persistent Case of Contagious Ecthyma (Orf) in Goats

Abstract

C ontagious ecthyma (Orf ) virus is a member of the genus parapoxvirus in the family of Poxviridae (Murphy et al., 2012; Nadeem et al., 2010). It is commonly called "Orf " which is an acute, contagious, debilitating and important zoonotic skin disease that affects domestic and wild ruminants especially sheep and goat. It is also known as contagious ecthyma, contagious pustular dermatitis (CPD), sore mouth and scabby mouth (CDC, 2015; Nandi et al., 2011), a disease of economic significant among small ru-minant industries (Kusiluka and Kambarage, 1996; Lovatt et al., 2012). In the face of outbreaks of contagious ecthyma, morbidity can be as high as 100%, whilst mortality is usually less than 1% but increase to 20% -50% as a result of secondary bacterial complications, stress, immunosuppression or concomitant disease and can exceed up to 90% in the case of 'malignant Orf ' Contagious ecthyma is a non-systemic eruptive skin disease having worldwide distribution (Mondal et al., 2006). This virus primarily causes acute pustular lesion