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Abstract
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With a total population of over 37 million heads, camels serve as an important source of milk and meat around the globe, especially in Asia and Africa. The single-humped camels, renowned as dromedary (Camelus dromedarius), are approximately 95% of the total population of camelids and are present in 47 countries (Food Agriculture Organization of The United Nations 2019), where they are playing a pivotal economic role. As the camels are an important food source in arid and semi-arid zones, the term used for camelids has been transformed from “ship of the desert” to “food security livestock” species. One evidence is that between the years 2008 and 2018, the camel world population increased by 21% compared to 4, 5, 9, and 15% for pigs, cattle, sheep, and goats, respectively (Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations 2019). However, despite being extremely resistant to harsh environmental conditions, dromedaries can get infected with several zoonotic pathogens, thus posing a public health risk (Sazmand et al. 2019b; Zhu et al. 2019).
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