Role of dogs in contamination of urban environment with causes of parasitic zoonoses

Dogs belong to the group of animals that were the first to be domesticated. They live in cohabitation with humans and share their environment much more intimately than any other animal specie. The close contact between strays and pets, on the one side, and the pollution of urban areas with the feces of these animals, on the other, close the chain of infection with parasites, which jeopardizes also human health in the final link of that chain. Dogs are carriers and the true hosts to large numbers of species of zoonotic parasites - Cryptosporidium parvum, Giardia lamblia, Echinoccocus granulosus, Dipyllidium caninum, Toxocara canis, Ancylostomidae spp. and others, whose eggs or other developmental forms they eliminate into the environment through feces. The increase in the number of cases of toxocarosis in humans (syndrome of visceral larvae migrans), ancylostomosis (cutanea larvae migrans), hydatidosis, toxoplasmosis, or cryptosporidiosis are the best indicators of these relations. In order to resolve this problem, it is necessary to conduct systematic investigations of their parasitic fauna with the maximum cooperation of the animal owners, compulsory health education of the population in the area of the diseases that are transferred from animals to humans, and, certainly, carrying out the dehelminthization of dogs.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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