Robert Muriithi Mugambi, a young parasitologist in Kenya, is on a mission to save East Africa’s cattle industry from the crippling impact of East Coast Fever.
Robert is poised to offer a lifeline to farmers across the region through his innovative work on an East Coast Fever groundbreaking diagnostic tool.
He is a PhD Fellow taking veterinary parasitology at the University of Nairobi, working with other young scientists in the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Animal Health. (AHIL)
AHIL aims to develop a pen-side tool that is sensitive and specific to diagnosing East Coast Fever.
Mugambi’s childhood in Ruai, Nairobi County, was filled with the presence of animals. His deep love for cattle was evident in his daily routine of herding with his cousins during school holidays and weekends, a practice that revealed his keen observation of their behavior and health.
He keenly observed their feeding behavior, skin, and even how the cows interacted, and he would notice when one of his cows was unwell.
“My cousins and I went herding the whole day during school holidays. I grew up knowing that animals were part of the family because we had even named each of them.”
His bond with the animals was so strong that the unexplained death of one due to disease deeply affected him. This experience fueled his determination to find a solution, leading to the intersection of his love for animals and his research journey.
This disease imposes a substantial economic burden on East African agriculture due to cattle illness and deaths. Mugambi’s research could significantly reduce this burden by enabling early detection and treatment of the disease.
East Coast Fever is a deadly disease caused by the protozoan parasite Theileria parva, which is informally called ‘cattle malaria.’
“Once the tick bites an animal, it has to be treated immediately because it is lethal; the incubation period is 8 to 12 days post-infection,” explains Mugambi.
The symptoms include loss of appetite, spiking temperature, weight loss, breathing difficulties, nasal discharges, and swollen lymph nodes.
According to Mugambi, the problem with its diagnostics is that they are limited to microscopy and lab-based, and the areas where East Coast Fever is highly endemic need labs for testing.
This is why he is working on a pen-side tool that a farmer or a veterinary officer can use at the farm level to pick up infections quite early and begin treatment in good time.
Mugambi developed a highly sensitive and affordable rapid test kit with Dr. Nicholas Svitek, ILRI senior scientist and PhD supervisor. Mugambi and his supervisor Svitek designed the test considering the simple equipment and conditions typical for rural veterinary officers or farmers.
The new test can give results in just 1.5 hours, at unprecedented sensitivity, when carrying out all steps, including DNA extraction from cattle blood samples. It can detect the presence of a single T. parva-infected cell within three microlitres of blood containing several thousands of blood cells. This means the test could diagnose ECF infection even before clinical symptoms manifest.
The current method of diagnosing ECF involves taking a blood sample and transporting it to a specialised laboratory to analyze it for traces of T. parva DNA.
For the test, the scientists devised paper-like strips similar to those used in lateral flow COVID-19 tests, which make the fluorescence measurable by accumulating a signal at a test line. As there are multiple strains of T. parva, Mugambi also proved the test could specifically identify eight different ECF-causing T. parva strains but would not be triggered by other Theileria species that did not cause the disease.
Another primary goal was affordability. Currently, the test costs an estimated KES 1000 (USD 7.78). However, if critical components are made in-house rather than bought and imported, they believe the cost could be reduced to less than KES 200 (USD 1.55).
Mugambi and his supervisor Svitek are also developing the same new diagnostic test kit to test for two other parasitic cattle diseases–babesiosis and anaplasmosis.
His love for diagnostics is evident in the fact that he did almost similar research during his master’s in molecular biology at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, where he developed a diagnostic kit for hookworms in humans.
“I like diagnostics, and I look at it as the essence of any research, be it in surveillance, epidemiology, or clinical treatment, because you need a diagnostic tool that would tell the burden of the disease, the prevalence or incidence rate. It is a cross-cutting discipline in science,” he adds.
Mugambi acknowledges his mentors’ significant role in shaping his research journey and providing him with the platform to grow.
One of his mentors, Dr Robert Karanja, a researcher at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, took him under his wing while volunteering at KEMRI. Dr Karanja’s guidance and trust in Mugambi’s abilities have been instrumental in shaping his research career.
“Straight from undergrad, having someone to trust me and allow me to do my stuff without micromanagement gave me so much confidence to stick to science and learn what I needed to do at my basic level.
Additionally, Dr Nicholas Svitek from the International Livestock Research Institute, his current supervisor, and whom he has been under his tutelage for eight years, has also influenced the researcher he has become.
He says he reminds him of his first mentor by giving him confidence in science and allowing him to do what he needs.
“If I make a mistake or two, he would still allow me to go back and get it on my own, and that has boosted my confidence,” he says, adding that it gives him space to think and apply all solutions from his Masters level and now in his PhD.
So far, he has published his first work on the pen-side diagnostic tool and East Coast Fever and is working on two other tick-borne diseases.
If Mugambi is not in a lab coat working through his research, you will find him watching birds, reading, or listening to music, depending on his mood.
Birds have always intrigued him, and he has also learned much from them. For instance, he has learned that if you see two birds of the same species, the good-looking one with the prettiest or most colourful feathers is the male, including the peacocks we all admire.
“I marvel at the variety of birds in our environment. I am lost in time; watching them gives me peace and gentleness. My favourite bird is the African hoopoe,” he says.
In five years, Mugambi hopes to continue his research on a larger scale and help more farmers worldwide, not just in Kenya.
Mugambi is one of the ten fully supported PhD fellows under the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Animal Health (AHIL) program, which is being implemented in 600 households in Narok County in Kenya to improve human nutrition, economic welfare and resilience by removing constraints to cattle health and production in Kenya and the East Africa region.
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Washington State University leads the AHIL consortium with Kenya-based partners, including the University of Nairobi, the International Livestock Research Institute, and Scientists from the Kenya Medical Research Institute and Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization.
The five-year program combines laboratory and field intervention studies to improve the uptake of animal health interventions and measure the impact on household well-being and the nutritional status of women and children.
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Animal Health is a five-year cooperative agreement funded by the USAID Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security.
The Innovation Lab for Animal Health’s vision is to improve human nutrition, economic welfare, and resilience by removing cattle health and production constraints in Kenya and the East African region.
EAST COAST FEVER FACT SHEET
- Due to cattle illness and deaths, ECF imposes a substantial economic burden in several parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
- East Coast Fever, ECF, a cattle disease informally known as ‘cattle malaria,’ is extensively spreading in farming communities.
- ECF is a tick-transmitted disease caused by the protozoan parasite Theileria parva. It kills cattle within three weeks of infection through a fluid build-up in their lungs, otherwise called pulmonary edema, drowning the animals.
- ECF is common in central, eastern, and southern Africa and has been reported in 12 countries in the region: Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, southern Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It kills at least 1 million cattle annually.
