[dropcap style=”font-size: 70px; color: #052b51; font-family: ‘Droid Serif’, Arial, sans-serif;”] W [/dropcap] e harp on this one an awful lot but African Horse Sickness is such a horrible disease. So many horsey folk don’t seem to know much about it either. We took some information from the African Horse Sickness Information to help educate you. You can find the full website by clicking here.
So what exactly is African Horse Sickness?
frican horse sickness (AHS) is a highly infectious non-contagious, vector born viral disease affecting all species of Equidae. It is classified as an Orbivirus of the Reoviridae family of which there are 9 serotypes. All serotypes (1-9) are distributed throughout South Africa, although there is a variation in their temporal distribution. It is endemic to (occurs naturally on) the African continent, and is characterised by respiratory and circulatory damage, accompanied by fever and loss of appetite.
What symptoms should you look out for?
he disease manifests in three ways, namely the lung form, the heart form and the mixed form. The lung (dunkop) form is characterised in the following manner:
- very high fever (up to 41 degrees).
- difficulty in breathing, with mouth open and head hanging down.
- frothy discharge may pour from the nose.
- sudden onset of death.
- very high death rate (90%).
The heart (dikkop) form is characterised in the following manner:
- fever, followed by swelling of the head and eyes.
- in severe cases, the entire head swells (“dikkop”).
- loss of ability to swallow and possible colic symptoms may occur.
- terminal signs include bleeding (of pinpoint size) in the membranes of the mouth and eyes.
- Slower onset of death, occurring 4 to 8 days after the fever has started.
- Lower death rate (50%).
The mixed form is characterised by symptoms of both the dunkop and dikkop forms of the disease.