In tropical Africa, protozoan parasites cause several diseases of social and economic importance. Among protozoan parasites, trypanosomosis is one of the most devastating zoonotic diseases caused by infection with trypanosomes, which are transmitted primarily by tsetse flies and other hematophagous flies to human, domestic animals and wildlife. A cross-sectional study was conducted to estimate the prevalence of Bovine anemia associated with trypanosomosis and the analysis of major associated risk factors. From total examined cattle for anemia n= 437; only n=196 of them have had anemia, with an overall prevalence rate of 44.85%. Packed cell volume for all study animals were analyzed to compare the degree of anemia between trypanosome infected and non-infected cattle's; which resulted in n=39, 73.58% anemic and n=14, 26.42% non-anemic from total of n=53 trypanosome infected cattle's and n=157, 40.89% were anemic from total of n=384 cattle's without trypanosome infection. Hence, a significantly higher prevalence rate of anemia 73.58% was observed in trypanosome infected cattle when compared with a 40.89% prevalence rate without trypanosome infection χ2= 20.13, p-value=0.00. The overall resulted Trypanosomosis prevalence was 12.13%; composed of n= 33(7.55%), 16(3.66%) and 4(0.92%) for Trypanosoma congolense, Trypanosoma vivax and mixed infection (both Trypanosoma congolense and Trypanosoma vivax) respectively. The study concluded that trypanosomosis strongly causes anemia however, all recorded anemia in the study is not caused by study protozoa alone. The study recommended that controlling anemia was mandatory to maximize cattle production and reproduction, which could be achieved by controlling trypanosomosis and associated risk factors.

Keywords: Prevalence, Anemia, Bovine trypanosomosis, Associated risk factors, Ethiopia