petcarefun.info

May 14th, 2009 by KittyKitty

Each year literally hundreds of millions exotic animals are imported into the USA and Europe. One day an unsuspecting animal could be contentedly hopping around in Asia, Africa or South America and suddenly find itself transferred half way across the world and in some child’s bedroom inside a week. Often a lot of these pets do not go through any quarantine procedures and allowed into the country and our homes after cursory health screening. Many owners are unaware that their exotic pet may be hazardous for the healt of their families.

Zoonotic Diseases

Zoonotic diseases are those that can jump from animals to humans. In the USA today, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that zoonotic diseases are responsible for 75% of all emerging infectious diseases.

So what kinds of diseases could your pet hedgehog be carrying.

A recent CDC report lists a scary number of confirmed and potential zoonotic diseases that pet and wild hedgehogs can carry. The confirmed diseases include Salmonella, Yersina, pseudotubercolosis, Mycobacterium marinum, Herpesvirus including human herpes simplex and Rabies. The potential diseases they can carry include Yersina pestis (also responsible for Bubonic plague) and hemorrhagic fever.

Salmonella

Salmonella is normally contracted from contaminated food. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 1 in 20 of all infections are passed to people by exotic pets. For example they estimate that nearly eighty thousand Americans contract Salmonella from their pet reptiles every year.

In 1994 African Pygmy Hedgehogs were responsible for passing on a rare form of Salmonella (S. tilene), to a 10 month old girl who became the first ever confirmed case of this serotype in a human in the USA. The girl’s family were hedgehog breeders who kept a herd of about 80 hedgehogs. It should be noted that the little girl never touched the hedgehogs herself. A family member who had been in contact with the animals spread the infection to her. This serotype has since been found to be the cause of infection in many other cases.

Ringworm

Despite its name ringworm or Tinea is not a worm but is actually a fungal skin infection. One source of ringworm is known to be pet and wild hedgehogs. Over the past few months HedgehogsAsPets.com has been covering a story where three people were infected with ringworm by two hoglets bought from the same breeder.

This story even more frightening because the woman concerned somehow managed to get around the UK’s strict quarantine laws and import several African Pygmy Hedgehogs directly into the country from Germany. Usually anti rabies legislation requires hedgehogs to spend six months in a government regulated facility before they can be imported into the country.

In this story the breeder claims that the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) put aside their normal procedures and permitted her to quarantine her new pets in her house, (which incidentally was already a veritable zoo containing snakes, lizards, rats, other hedgehogs and sugar gliders). The breeder later learned that the German breeder’s herd was infected with ringworm, but not before she had spread the disease from the “German” hedgehogs to her breeding pair. The offspring of these latter were sold and went on to infect three people with ringworm.

As well as the ringworm part of the story, this case illustrates what happens when you buy your pets from unreliable and dishonest dealers and breeders. Over the past six months the breeder in question has promised to pay part of the new owners’ vet’s fees but they have yet to see a penny-.

Reducing the risk of infection

To reduce the risk of infection simply go to this site and follow the advice they give there: http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/browse_by_animal.htm.

Buying your pet from a reputable breeder rather than a pet store or pet distributor, should also provide you with more guarantees about where the animal came from.

Although the chances of catching an exotic disease from your pet are not very big, you must take into consideration that the risk does exist and take steps to minimise it. If you follow the advice given on the CDC web site that risk is greatly reduced.