Horse vets meet on flu alarm
2003-12-10 13:41
Cape Town - The immediate future of the Western Cape horse racing industry will be determined at a meeting in Cape Town on Wednesday afternoon.
Tests confirmed an outbreak of horse flu after horses displayed symptoms of the viral infection at Milnerton training centre on Tuesday.
Dr Gideon Brückner, director of veterinarian services in the Western Cape, says it is impossible to say how long the horses stabled at Milnerton would have to remain isolated.
He said Professor Alan Guthrie of the Equine Research Centre of the University of Pretoria's Faculty of Veterinary Science, the Western Cape State veterinarian, vets of the Jockey Club of Southern Africa and those in private practice will attend the meeting.
The meeting will decide on a plan of action for coping with the outbreak of the highly contagious disease.
Brückner said the most important step would be to identify and isolate all infected horses at Milnerton. Infected horses have already been placed under quarantine.
10 day confinement
No horses may be moved from the centre for at least the next 10 days for fear of spreading the disease to other centres.
He said: "We are all hoping that this is an isolated outbreak. But we have to wait and see over the next ten days whether cases of infection occur in other areas."
The incubation period of the disease is five days, but there is no way of knowing which horses have already been infected and at what stage of incubation they are at present.
An equally important step would be to inoculate high-risk animals, such as racehorses. Brückner said enough units of vaccine were available in the country. Another 5 000 units would be flown in from Europe.
Samples of the virus taken from infected horses in Milnerton will be sent to the Equine International Reference Laboratory in Europe, which will isolate the specific strain of virus. This would help determine the origins of the present infection.
South Africa has been free of the virus for the past 15 years.