- The System
Animal diseases/Zoonoses
Zoonoses - Species-jumping pathogens
This website gives an good explanation of zoonoses and why they continue to develop.
Bird Flu
Australian Government - Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry:
Bird flu risk real but not high - 10 March 2006
No evidence of H5N1 avian influenza in Australia - 23 February 2006
GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people’s control over genetic resources and local knowledge. This is their take on bird flu:
Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis
And commentary by an evolutionary biologist, on the GRAIN article, here
Weblinks
Chytridiomycosis
THREAT ABATEMENT PLAN for Infection of amphibians with chytrid fungus resulting in chytridiomycosis
Weblinks
Toxoplasmosis
A single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii causes a disease known as toxoplasmosis.
Humans can get this by accidentally swallowing cat faeces from a Toxoplasma-infected cat that is shedding the organism in its faeces. This might happen if you were to accidentally touch your hands to your mouth after gardening, cleaning a cat’s litter box, or touching anything that has come into contact with cat faeces. Also by eating contaminated, raw or partly-cooked meat, especially pork, lamb, or venison or by touching your hands to your mouth after handling under-cooked meat.
Most people who become infected with Toxoplasma are not aware of it and rarely show symptoms unless a person has a severely weakened immune system, such as individuals with HIV/AIDS, those taking certain types of chemotherapy, and those who have recently received an organ transplant. Infants born to mothers who became infected with Toxoplasma for the first time during or just before pregnancy can show symptoms.
The organism’s main home, however, is the gut of cats. Rats act as intermediary hosts, carrying the parasite in the form of dormant cysts which become lodged in the brain.
To get into a cat and complete its life cycle, the organism changes the behavior of the rat so that it is more likely to be caught and eaten.
It is every cat owner’s duty of care to keep his/her cats in a responsible manner.
Toxoplasmosis and Australian wildflife
Toxoplasmosis is a protozoan parasite carried by cats. Australian marsupials are particularly vulnerable to it because their ancestors evolved in the absence of cats and the disease.
Symptoms of the disease:
Problems with the respiratory and nervous systems or sudden death.
Species affected:
• Bandicoots • Dunnarts • Pygmy possums • Bilbies • Possums • Echidnas • Wombats • Numbats • Pademelons • Wallabies • Kangaroos • Kowaris • Koalas • Antechinus • Phascogales • Water rats • Swamp rats
Means of infection
Through the ingestion of spores spread through cat faeces or by eating uncooked sheep meat. Stress may exacerbate a latent infection.
Ramifications
Outbreaks of toxoplasmosis assume immense importance for rare and endangered marsupials in captive breeding programs and in management of small wild populations in remnant habitat.
Source information: Dr David Spratt, Sustainable Ecosystems, CSIRO, Canberra
