You've seen from the title that I, I've put in threats to UK horses, but hopefully everybody from around the world will be. To take something away from what I'm going to talk about because it is largely a talk about principles as as well as specifics for the UK horse population. Just to give you all an overview of what I intend to talk about in the next 50 odd minutes, I'm really going to define some concepts as I see them related to disease prevention and control, and you'll see the three words there, the four words epidemiology, surveillance, and horizon scanning, and I'll go into those in a little bit more detail in terms of their relevance to equine infectious disease.
I'm then going to explore horizon scanning for disease threats in a little bit more detail. Why is horizon scanning important? What might this involve?
What might arise from doing horizon scanning. And then I'll take a look at where I believe we are in terms of resources that are available across the globe for conducting er a degree of horizon scanning at the moment. And then in the second half of the talk, I'm going to really put those concepts a little bit into context of some real life examples, and there is a UK slant to that, but hopefully, again, people will take something from that wherever they are watching and listening to this.
And then finally, I just have one slide, which tries to bring that together with some concluding remarks. So we're tonight talking about equine infectious diseases, and these are important to the global horse industry and that's why it's really great to have a global audience tonight. And the problem with having a global horse industry where we move animals around.
Is that we do unfortunately have a habit of moving infections along with those horses. And what I've put here is horse-based commodities because we do move, things that will transfer equine infections around that are not actually the horse themselves and particularly blood products, obviously are important there. And horses and their commodities obviously frequently move internationally, as well, so they move across borders, they move across continents, they move across hemispheres.
Hopefully everybody that's listening and watching tonight will buy into the concept that disease prevention is better than cure. And obviously when we're talking about population, we're talking about controlling disease, so that's the form of cure. And if we can prevent that at the population level.
Then that obviously is preferable. So the real aim I feel is that as veterinarians we are trying to prevent international disease transmission. With that being the case, effective prevention and control require a number of things.
We need to have good knowledge of disease epidemiology and increasingly ecology. And also we need to have effective disease surveillance and horizon horizon scanning. So those are the three terms that I introduced when I gave the overview epidemiology, surveillance, and horizon scanning.
What I'll do now is go into a little bit more detail about how I see those terms and what their relevance is to equine infectious disease. So you'll see over the next few slides, I've trawled around looking for what I think are relevant definitions, and these are taken from a variety of sources. And those sources are not actually particularly important, but I, I have acknowledged them here.
So epidemiology can be described as the scientific study of the causes, distribution and control of diseases. So obviously when we're talking about equine infectious diseases, that's what we're talking about, and that's within populations. And in considering that definition of epidemiology and equine infectious disease epidemiology, we need to consider a number of things.
We need to consider the sources and the routes of introduction of the infection. The mechanisms by which those infections spread. And increasingly we need to include non-equine aspects.
Not all equine diseases are contagious from horse to horse. And also, this buzzword biosecurity is very, very important, prevention and control measures that are relevant to both direct and indirect transmission of disease. And the thing I've learned over the years is that I think we do need to keep an open mind with respect to potentially novel aspects of equine infectious disease epidemiology.
Not everything is known about these diseases and novel aspects do come to light, and I think having an open mind is, is a healthy thing. So what about surveillance? What, what, what definitions do we have for that?
And again you can see my sources there. Here I've taken. Actually two definitions.
One is the collection, the collation, the analysis, and the dissemination of data. Quite a simple definition, but very relevant. Another definition is a type of observational study that involves continuous monitoring of a disease occurrence within a population.
And I think that probably classically summarises how we, how we feel about surveillance. And finally, horizon scanning. Well, that was a little bit more of a a tricky find, but I came across this from the UK Government Office for Science.
It's a very interesting definition. The systematic examination of potential threats, opportunities and likely developments, including, but not restricted to those at the margins of current thinking and planning. So again, it, it does tend to suggest it's the things slightly outside of where we would normally be looking.
So why is this important? Well, surveillance and horizon scanning. Ah, I believe Key to knowing what is going on now and where it is going on now, which obviously is important.
In itself, but also it's important to know what might happen. Somewhere else in the future and Perhaps most importantly, what might be done to prevent future disease incursions in places that don't currently have the disease. So we have to look and know where things are going on if we're going to prevent things in the future.
Very simple concept, but one that I think we need to bear in mind. So there we've had some definitions and and they're quite broad reaching and perhaps we need a more practical perspective and that's what I'm now offering. This is my kind of practical perspective of surveillance.
This tends to be the close observation of disease occurrence and I feel that this. It is important at the national, the regional and the local level. I live in Newmarket or near Newmarket.
It's important to know what is going on in Newmarkett at the present time. Within East Anglia, the region that I live in, but also nationally within the UK. We must remember that international trade in any livestock, including bloodstock, the horse, relies on an element of certification for health, so the absence of disease.
And that really is key to preventing the movement of infectious animals by certifying that they don't have diseases and then being able to undertake that, trade that movement safely. To contrast that, horizon scanning is the identification of potential threats. That I think are probably more distant than we would probably not ordinarily think of through surveillance.
And this I feel is especially important at the international level. And sometimes we need to look around what is going on, perhaps not even within the species of direct interest, and we need to be prepared to think outside the box, perhaps, what might happen in the future. But why is this important?
Well, we have to combat threats now from new and emerging diseases. And these are particularly but not exclusively, but they are now definitely on the radar, what we call vector-borne diseases, so. This is where I come up with another definition.
This is a rather one that I've put together myself, but one that I think fits the bill. Vector borne diseases, these are what I see as diseases arising from the transfer of infectious agents indirectly to horses via non equine vectors. And It's been apparent over a number of years now that insect vectors are important for emerging diseases.
In the United Kingdom and perhaps elsewhere in Northern Europe, we've probably been fortunate in that these have not been common at all, but they've been quite rare. But they are common elsewhere and we do have to learn lessons from from those. And you see I've listed just three diseases here, African horse sickness, West Nile virus, equine infectious anaemia.
All important. Vector-borne, insect borne infections of the horse. But when we think of EIA, I think we also need to be aware that there are two-legged vectors out there.
Iatrogenic transmission can occur, and we do need to be conscious of man's role in the potential transmission of these infections and the role that we play. So why are we worrying in places like the UK and perhaps in in places around the world that don't have, have these infections at the moment? Well, there are a number of quite stark examples.
A sudden and relatively recent emergence of vector borne diseases in areas that have not been previously affected by these. And one of the most stark examples was the emergence in North America. Since 1999, West Nile virus and the establishment of the, endemic nature of that infection on, on that continent.
We saw in 2006, the emergence not in horses obviously, but bluetongue virus eight, Emerging in in Northern Europe when it might not have been expected to do so. We've seen multiple incursions of EIA across Europe, including Ireland in 2006, the UK in 2010, and elsewhere in Europe, and I'll touch on these later on. And again, a non-equine example, but one that's very stark, Schmalenberg virus.
Emerging in Europe since 2011 and again highlighting like bluetongue had, how an infection can very rapidly through its vector-borne status. Rapidly cover a continent and and cause problems as it goes. So I think we have to accept that there is an increasing risk that equine diseases may become established.
They may become endemic in fact, in, in new areas such as the United Kingdom. The last line here really is to try and emphasise that whilst controlling these infections is all very well and. Dealing with the endemic situation, ideally we would want to.
Eradicate these infections and return to a non. A disease state, a disease free state. But the holy grail surely has to be prevention, that has to be what we have to try and attain.
Prevent these infections before they come in, before they require eradication, and before they require any form of control. For equine infectious diseases, I think it's fair to say, as this picture shows, that the world is in fact shrinking. And the reason for that is that along with humans, the horse is a global mover.
It moves around the globe. And after humans, the horse probably is the most widely travelled animal that We have on on On the globe, and this is for both temporary and permanent movements. And we see inter intercontinental.
Movement of animals for competition and breeding as well as permanent export. But as I said at the beginning, unfortunately we do have a habit of this. Widespread movement of horses also leading to the rapid movement of their infections and obviously the establishment of new problems in new places, as they do so.
And I'll just, and this next slide, not suggesting there's any link between. Severe acute respiratory syndrome that was seen in, humans back in 2002, 2003. But both SARS and equine influenza highlight very similar concepts in my mind as to how we can get rapid and very far-flung transmission of viral infections around the world through the movement of animals that have, humans and animals that have been infected.
And so here we see a map representing the movement of the SARS virus through air travel from really the the hub where it emerged in Southeast Asia in particular, once it got into Hong Kong, we saw that infections starting to move into humans and then move with with air travel. On the same map, you'll see that I've actually inserted three arrows here, and this actually relates to the movement of animals from the northern to the southern hemisphere in August 2007. These were breeding stallions going into Australia for the southern hemisphere breeding season.
And unfortunately, within that group of animals, there were some that were infected with equine in with equine influenza. And through a failure of biosecurity, effective quarantine of those horses, that infection moved out of the quarantine station and into the largely naive horse population of New South Wales and South Queensland. And through movement of horses over quite long distances to events over a number of days, we saw the spreading, the seeding of that infection through, the horse populations of those two states.
And it was through the tracing back of what had happened, it became clear that this infection had in fact moved with horses coming out of Japan into Australia. And in turn, Japan had been infected through the movement of infected horses from North America. So both examples here of widespread transmission of viral infections through the movement of humans and animals through on aircraft.
Of course, this did not tend to be a problem in the old days when we didn't have jet aircraft and people moving rapidly. And that's because the transit time that animals would spend. On long sea passages was longer than the infectious periods, longer than the incubation periods, and therefore Australia was classically protected from influenza, through the movement of horses on boats rather than on planes.
But, well, that's perhaps of no relevance now, but actually some of the chronic diseases that we now worry about has either been very well established or indeed is re-emerging. It did not stop their global spread, and that was because of the carrier state that exists in a number of these infections, and I've listed here strangles, glanders, do, swamp fever, or EIA as we, we now know it. Those were very effective infections that were able to be spread around the world despite long sea passages to try and protect.
Populations. And I guess what this tries to illustrate is that all equine diseases are these, all of these were equine diseases of major global importance and we only. Be properly started to control these, once the epidemiology was recognised, the importance in these examples of the carrier state and the need to eliminate these from the population.
Through euthanasia And therefore, find examples of recognising epidemiology is is critical for effective control. And that has not changed at all. And it's still true today.
So moving on to what sources of information we have around the world on equine infectious diseases. And I've listed a number here that that are available around the world. Some are publicly available, some by subscription.
The first one that Anthony referred to in his introduction is the International collating centre that we run here at the Animal Health Trust. Which is a subscription service for thoroughbred industries around the world and. We disseminate information that we gather from a number of other sources.
We have the RESTA system which has been created in France but again is available. On global disease occurrence. Promed mail, again, a very broad online service that you can subscribe to.
It includes equine as well as other veterinary and human disease, a lot of activity. Just on Ebola on that medium at the moment. We then have the WI interface, the World Animal Health Information Database.
So this is part of the OIE service if you like. To understand what is going on with some of the major diseases around the world. Again, this is subscription this is registration.
You can get these notices dropped into your inbox on a daily basis, when the OIE report disease. And finally, I'm referring here to a UK based, this is the government, DEFRA Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. They conduct a number of preliminary outbreak assessments.
They respond to disease occurrence around the world, and they will make these very early assessments of these outbreaks, produce short reports, and those are available online. Along with qualitative risk assessments, which are done periodically when a disease risk is believed to be present or in fact changing. And so just to give you an example.
Of those last ones that are produced by DeFRA. Here you see a panel that's been made up of three reports, all preliminary outbreak assessments that appeared in a fairly short period of time back in 2012. We've seen the blue boarded panel there, 9th of August 2012.
EIA appearing in Western Europe. This relates to some outbreaks in, Belgium. A few weeks later, on the 28th of August.
Breaks that were appearing of the same disease in Germany and then finally on the 7th of September of the same year. The emergence of the IA in a southern part of France. So all related, all, all looking at this one disease, how it was emerging across Europe.
And prior to that in 2011, we have an example of DEFRA's qualitative risk assessment on EIA that was looking at the situation as it was appearing in Europe with endemic areas in Romania and in Italy. And the appearance of this disease and what the threat was indeed to UK horses at that time. So these are just examples of resources that are available if you know where to look.
So what might this horizon scanning and surveillance actually involve? Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that animal owners, keepers, and their attending veterinary surgeons. Really are critical to everything that that goes on.
They are the eyes and ears of surveillance. And their awareness and knowledge is absolutely critical. They are the people that are seeing these animals day in, day out, tending to their problems and may well be deducing that we have an emerging.
Problem. But on top of that, there has to be timely monitoring, collation, exchange, and wider dissemination of any information on disease occurrence. And I think these collectively are really important concept.
And they're relevant both nationally and internationally. They are relevant to exchange of information between responsible authorities, so government veterinary authorities, and indeed that does. Go on, and we've seen that for a number of emerging diseases over the years, particularly within Europe, at the level of the European Commission.
But it's also important that this exchange of information also occurs with industry and the veterinary profession. As well as the government authorities, so that everybody that this is relevant to, is part of this information exchange. And it's all very well having this knowledge, this exchange of information, but people have to take action in response to heightened threats.
So that horizon scanning and surveillance are not just idly gazing and looking at what's going on, they're actually leading to a response that can affect, hopefully. Prevention, and the examples that I will give will hopefully highlight some of the concepts that I'm talking about here. So thinking about those actions, what might actually come out of this process?
And I've given some examples here. Well, we may well see that monitoring of animal movements becomes a little bit more scrutinised, and in fact, we may actually see that restrictions on movements of animals are in fact warranted in order to prevent onward transmission of infection. We may well see that there is enhanced screening of the health of animals or the disease that might be occurring.
This may involve enhanced clinical monitoring or indeed some laboratory testing. We may see examples of codes of practise being drawn up and implemented. We may see contingency planning and drawing up of control strategies in order to.
Get ahead of a problem in case it should occur. And we may see legislative changes as well, and this may occur obviously at the national level. But we may see a form of this internationally through perhaps.
The EU EU directives. Changes in OIE standards perhaps, and implementation of these across a wider geographical area. So that, that's really I guess is my journey through the concepts that I think about as somebody that has to advise horse industry about the threats that are are out there, and they have been changing over time.
And what I now want to do is spend the remainder of this time that I have. Giving you some 3 examples really of where I feel that we've done this sort of process and this has led to some important some important changes. So it isn't just idle gazing.
It is, I feel time that has been well spent. So the first example, on all of these, I kind of set the scene and you have an opportunity now to see if you can . Try and derive the disease that I'm actually talking about.
So in the first example, This is where Awareness of an emerging disease situation was, was coming to light within, within Europe. We saw an example with this one of DA conducting. A preliminary outbreak assessment.
And in response to that growing awareness and that preliminary outbreak assessment that was conducted, we saw the horse industry, particularly the breeding industry, being proactive in developing and implementing a code of practise, and it did that in conjunction with DEFRA. And we still see that. In as a code of practise being implemented today.
The disease that I'm talking about here is, is durin, a veneerly transmitted protozoan disease caused by infection with trepanosoma equipodum. This relates in particular to an outbreak that was confirmed in Italy in May 2011. The images that you see there on the right actually pertain to that outbreak as it as it occurred in, in, in Italy.
So in trying to protect the UK horse population from this emerging infection, DeRA conducted one of their preliminary outbreak assessments. In fact, they conducted two. This one you'll see here was the conductor on the 1st of June, and as more information came to light.
A further update was provided just over 2 weeks later with an update. With a second outbreak assessment providing more information. And here you see two pages that have been taken from that.
Preliminary outbreak assessment. And here I've just highlighted that some text. And what that essentially tells you is that because of the known EIA situation that was present in Italy and was known about.
The tests were already being done. Animal movements from Italy into the UK were recorded on the tracer system, and those animals. Were subjects, some of them to post arrival testing for EIA.
And what they simply did was that they extended this now to include Doreen, so it was quite easy to extend this surveillance, extended surveillance for this potentially emerging infection that was known about in Italy. For its part, the equine industry, particularly the thoroughbred breeding industry, . Looked at this and between 2011 when this problem emerged.
And the autumn of 2011 going into 2012 drew up. A new code of practise, that was specifically written with this threat in mind. And the recommendation to isolate and blood test animals coming from.
Affected areas before they were bred, that was implemented and this particularly related to mares originating from from Italy as well as. Obviously other affected areas, although, although those weren't freely trading potentially with the EU at that time. And that code is still in the collective codes of practise even to this day.
The 2nd example I have. This actually relates to awareness of an emerging non-equine disease situation within Northern Europe. And here we saw a very nice example of the equine industry working closely with the British government in forming a working group and looking at the threat that was there.
Out of this came the development of a control strategy and allied legislation to facilitate the control and hopefully eradication of a disease it should it occur. And we have seen both the equine industry and government putting investment into resource development. Including Diva back.
Seems much more relevant to to the horse market that we have in the UK. So what am I talking about here? Well, the threat was actually bluetongue virus A.
This midge borne orbi virus. But this was believed to be perhaps. A precursor to the incursion of African horse sickness into Europe because that too is obviously a midge-borne virus.
So if it could happen with Bluetongue virus eight, might it happen with African horse. Or sickness And this slide here really just highlights the apparent root. The source of which definitive source or route of introduction was never actually.
Determined But it was the apparent parachuting of bluetongue virus into northern Europe and then obviously it's successful transmission across that continent for over at least a couple of seasons. So what does Bluetongue virus teach us as a horse industry? Well, obviously we're aware of what we believe would be predictable incursions that might occur with that.
Northerly spread through global warming from northern Africa and Southern Europe. But because of the transmission of bluetongue virus and African horse sickness through quite long distance transfer of Cleoides species midges, we need to be a little bit alert. That things may be different, and that was indeed seen with bluetongue virus, the sudden parachuting into these new regions.
And the clear demonstration that although the ecological determinants of what makes us successful, or the virus transmit within the new population it did seem to highlight that we might see rapid adaptation in new insect vectors and this. If you like, we're starting to rewrite the textbook on mis transmitted infections, so we had to be alert to this. And the way that the UK started to deal with the threat of African horse sickness, which was now not believed to be almost negligible, it, it was believed to be true.
Was that this working group was established, it was considered to be successful, and it led in 2012 to the publication, and ratification of the control strategy. And also the Allied African horse sickness regulations which have actually now been adopted across, both England, Wales, and indeed Scotland as well. So what would the objectives of this African horse sickness control strategy be?
Well, we'd want to identify any suspectators and determine if African horse sickness. Was positive as quickly as possible. It would also want to act to eliminate the infection as quickly as possible in order to try and avoid the spread into the endemic vectors.
It would want to determine the route of introduction and obviously put a stop to that in the future. And most importantly, it would want to regain the African horse sickness free status that Britain has enjoyed for so long as soon as possible. And we only have to think back to what happened in Spain in the late 1980s to know that this is a real and present threat and and we do need to take it seriously.
There was also African horse sickness education material for horse owners produced and whilst these are not widely used at the moment, they have been produced and can be rolled out quite rapidly for an education programme about this emerging threat. I mentioned that resource and investment had been put into trying to better understand this infection and its relevance to the British horse population. Indeed, the horse race betting levy board, an important funder of equine scientific research in the UK.
That funded a project that was looking at. Risk modelling the introduction of African horse sickness into the UK. And indeed risk risk maps have been produced for for Great Britain, and they've shown a number of things.
Obviously the risk varies by month and that does so with the temperature that we see across the year. With the risk of outbreaks propagating being the highest between June and September. We see that the risk varies actually with the density of ruminants that we see, so there will be a geographical variation in that risk across the UK.
It does vary with midge abundance and depending what the midge biting preference is between other species and the horse, this will determine what that risk is for the UK. And indeed, the levee would have gone on and funded this work further in trying to understand better what the biting preferences of midges are. And this is a project that's been led by Simon Carpenter at the Purright Institute, which is where the centre of excellence for this, this type of work is being conducted.
And that that work is close to being concluded now. At the same time, we have to consider the use of vaccines in controlling African horse sickness. And here you see an example of some of the material that's available for African homesickness vaccines in South Africa.
Well, they live with they. South Africans live with African horse sickness all the time. Well, can't we just use their vaccines?
Well, perhaps we can, but. The problem that we have is that in South Africa they have polyvalent products that are live attenuated and those products don't necessarily. Give non-endemic areas such as Europe.
Really the right tool to deal with this infection and, and may in fact cause more problems than they solve. So indeed, a number of areas of work have been developed and here we have an example of safer vaccines with diva capability, and there are two, and these relate to already published work. One is through aerial product based on the Canarypox platform work that was conducted actually over in South Africa and demonstrating that this established vaccine, .
Technology that is already in use across the globe for equine flu. May hold an important potential for being used against African horse sickness. The panel on the left there just highlights that this product, certainly proof of principle was able to be shown in the animals that were protected by this product were not viaremic, did not go through clinical disease, and, and didn't undergo the thrombocytopenia that's seen with African horse sickness.
Similarly, some more recent work that's been done between the Purright Ins Institute funded by DEFRA, and with some of this in conjunction with the commercial collaborator at Zoitis. Has led to the development of another potential important product based on modified vaccine your ankara virus expressing proteins of African horse sickness, and again, a successful preliminary trial showing great promise that this product can protect animals against clinical disease. And it can in fact prevent viremia.
Control animals quickly becoming positive, whereas the vaccinated animals remain negative over a number of weeks in the post challenge phase. So that concludes two of my examples, and the third one really is quite a broad ranging example, where we have seen awareness of a changing global situation of a vector-borne equine infectious disease. And we've seen assessments made of risks posed from changing vector distributions and potential incursions.
And the example that I've got here is, is quite a well-known one, West Nile virus. Which is still an emerging mosquito-borne flavivirus, which is becoming increasingly well established across the globe. And From my perspective, I've been looking at what the risks might well be to .
The horse, in in the UK and in in some parts of Europe. And these risks come from a number of different areas. And we have to start to think outside the box though the risk from non-equine commodities and this .
Title here really starts to highlight, some of the potential threats which may come from nothing to do with the horse, mosquito breeding, entire disposal sites in the West Midlands region of the UK. And when you start to look through. The The references that are referred to in this journal, in this article, you start to see that the international movement of.
Commodities such as tyres around the world has been absolutely important for moving. Disease vectors around, so it's a well known and established phenomenon now that the movement of disease. Bearing species of insects, particularly mosquitoes, can occur through the movement of used time.
Around the world, and we'll come back to this. But obviously in terms of conducting West Nile surveillance, both birds and mosquitoes may be responsible for introducing this infection. And therefore, I think we're starting to see that perhaps there is an increased risk to both human and horse health from this infection in in the UK.
And if we start to look at the literature on this, we start to see where this evidence is accruing. This is the title of . A short report that was produced looking at West Nile virus vector Culex Modesta.
And it's one of the first reports with this showing that this vector was starting to become established in southern England. And here is a map taken on. From that report and here you see that stream there that that that's the River Thames with Essex above it, North Kent below it and what this report was demonstrating.
Was that we had this important bridge vector that's able to take West Nile virus from birds and potentially transmit it to humans and horses, that this was starting to become detected and established in some of these North Kent marshes. And so These authors started to inform us in this publication that perhaps there was a risk now being posed to horses that are grazed in these in these areas. And they also highlighted again.
That these infections may have been introduced through the movement of ships from different parts of the world into the ports of London, and these black squares on this map represent where ships have have been docking and therefore they offer a suggestion of how this vector may have been introduced. Some of those same authors subsequently. And this publication is taken, this is a letter from the veterinary record in in September of 2012, and they were looking at the same vector elsewhere in England.
And Here they They highlight that they'd they'd found this species mosquito. In, an area in Cambridgeshire. On specifically the adventurous Fen which neighbours Wicken Fen.
Now that may not mean much to many of you people out there. If I have to highlight to you that that here, this is Wicken Fen, it's a national nature reserve. And that is the town of Newmarket, with many thousands of racehorses, and those two are actually very close together geographically.
And so the finding of a bridge vector for West Nile virus. On a national, nature reserve, quite close to Newmarket is potentially quite an important finding. If we go a little bit further into this, on that natural .
This National Trust natural area. We also have a potential sentinel species grazing, the conic pony. And these greys on adventurous Fen, so already you can see.
That we have 2 out of the 3 elements that may be important for the emergence of equine West Nile virus. We have the presence of a bridge vector, we have the presence of a dead end host that can manifest clinical disease, and perhaps all that we're missing is the virus itself. And so the same authors in this letter.
Wrote that this endorses the need for ongoing and sustained mosquito surveillance work in the UK to ensure that public health risk assessments are evidence based. The presence of Culex modesas in the UK suggests that West Nile risk to humans and horses may be higher in these locations. This is a real sort of warning that we may yet see the emergence of this infection.
We have potentially all of. The parts of the ecology that will make this happen. And very, very recently, the same authors, in September of just this year.
Have again. Gone to press through the letters page of the veterinary record board. And they highlight the growing evidence of a wide distribution and high density of Culex modesas in Kent, possibly Essex.
And they now consider that this is an endemic mosquito species in Thames estuary marshes. And that this is in contrast to some earlier evidence that was taken in 2003. And their potential role in future disease transmission and they know nuisance biting of humans requires further investigation to determine the presence of.
The virus in mosquitoes, birds and horses. So we're getting a very stark warning here that we do need to really take lifestyle, . Virus.
Seriously, because we do have an important bridge vector now established in the UK, and these are the areas that we do need to be, where if we're gonna see human disease, horse disease, these are the places where it may well occur. So I'll now draw to a close. The concluding remarks that I would like to make are that I believe that emerging equine disease threats are a reality.
Communicating information on disease occurrence globally is critical if we are to maintain our awareness and responsiveness to these infections. I believe that horizon scanning surveillance is feasible. And that using this information appropriately can reduce resist from disease incursion.
We need to be responsive. And finally. By harmonising internationally the approaches that we take, we should be able to mitigate global disease risks to the horses that that we look after.
And thank you very much everybody for listening. I hope you've got a few questions that you've been able to put through Anthony, and I'll be very happy to try and answer those if I can. Thank you very much.
Fantastic, Richard, really enjoyed that. Of course I remember, you know, in the Middle Ages, of course, the Essex Fens were places where malaria lurked as well, so these diseases, perhaps as the climate is also warming up, are things that, you know, as you've showed very eloquently, there, have the potential very much to come back. Absolutely, yep, malaria.
Do we have African horse sickness, that there's, there are a few outbreaks in Europe then as well you were saying within the, the webinar itself. There have been, the most stark and recent one was the incursion into southern Spain and Portugal and Morocco, and they, they managed to successfully eradicate that just prior to the Barcelona Olympics, in fact, so. Oh, fantastic.
And how did they, how did they manage to eradicate it? Well, it, it was there for about 4 years. They adopted a vaccination programme, but they also, sprayed as well.
And did they spray for mosquitoes and the like, or that wasn't the way to do it? Well, no, it controlling the vectors obviously is, is very important, . But obviously with with African horses it was mainly midges and they can be a very difficult vector to to to actually deal with.
So yeah, protecting horses from midge bites is important, but also dealing with diseased animals, very early on to reduce the possibility of infecting midges is important too. You know, we're very much in the middle of this, . Outbreak of Ebola and and very much it's, it's about trying to prevent.
You know, it's looking also at the areas where the diseases happen rather than waiting until they, they come to the UK and Europe, isn't it, as well. You know, dealing with the disease at source and so on. Yeah, that, that's absolutely critical and obviously Ebola's demonstrating this idea that, you know, if you can put out small fires before they turn into large forest fires, then that's really the way to go.
And unfortunately for Ebola, a little bit like we are with African horse sickness in non-endemic areas, you don't necessarily have all of the tools. Do you have the best diagnostics? Are they available on the ground when you need them?
We don't have a vaccine yet, . We probably will do soon, but that's because there's been a lot of resource put into it very late. When this started, we were in a much worse position.
And it's always a shame that you have to go through a disaster to learn the lessons, and I think the You know, the, the really good thing is learning the lessons before you have the disaster. We don't take you seriously when you start to say, look, we, we, there is a threat here. And coming back to West Nile, we actually have the tools there.
We, we have 2 vaccines licenced across Europe. That we could prevent that being a problem in our horses, something they didn't have in the states when it first emerged in the lay. 1990s.
We're in a much better position now. Hm, good. Just for those people, you know, perhaps are not as familiar with webinars, if you do want to ask a question, just go to the question box.
You've got the box on the right hand side. If you see the orange arrow, click that across, go down to questions, you can type a question in. And then I can pass that over to Richard.
And if you're doing that as well and looking, those of you who perhaps came in late, you want to tell us where you're listening from, I know we've got a real mixed group of vets from all over the world on the webinar today. So please do feel free to test that out by typing in where you're listening from. We've got Karen practising in, in the, .
The The fens of Kent, or at least in down in that east coast where you've been talking about, so she said, I practise in Kent area of VR vector insect potential and have a pony belonging to a client being imported from Slovenia shortly from an area where West Nile fever virus is published as being present. How do I advise on this? What are your thoughts?
I've emailed a question to DeFRA, but not yet had a response. That's very interesting, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the first thing to say is, is, as, as far as we know, the human and the horse are considered as, dead end or incidental hosts, and it is believed that they do not achieve when they are infected, a sufficiently high viremia, so it's virus in the blood, enough to infect mosquitoes themselves. So . Importing a horse from an endemic area is not particularly viewed as a, as a sort of risk to the nation, if you like, but obviously, And, and so equally that that horse, you know, if it was infected, would not believe to, you know, pose a risk as the introducer of the virus that almost certainly would have to be a bird and obviously in, the, the sort of wetland areas that that we have in.
You know, the eastern part of England, you know, we do get visitors, bird visitors, and, and some of those could come certainly from, In infected areas, particularly in, in Africa. So we do worry about that. So I, I don't think at the moment we've got no suggestion that bringing an animal into this part of the, the world is at risk from West Nile, and equally, I don't believe that that an animal, if it was unfortunate to be infected, would pose a risk to, to, to others.
So, . But again, so important to know that epidemiology and, and so interesting, I, I'm sure that's been worth your while, Karen coming on just to, to realise that . You know there should be no risk.
I, I mean, I would just sort of say a word of warning that that there has been a report, if you like. The first horse that that has been confirmed with West Nile virus in the UK, but it was very, very recently imported, actually from, from Cyprus, and it's believed that that horse was imported with the infection to acquire it here. So obviously post importation, you would always want to.
You know, take sensible precautions and, and monitor animals closely, but I don't think there is a, a risk either way from, from West Nile. And of course there's a little interest, I was reading my VDS magazine with interest, those of you who don't know Veterinary defence Society who, who, insure vets, against claims against them, and of course in that there was a. An article about a vet who'd who'd seen a strangle's case in a yard and had discussed it with the client, but of course had not told everybody else on the yard and.
Because of client confidentiality and then was lambasted by the client when of course some of the other animals came down with it. So it's, there's a balancing act sometimes with some of these diseases where you can't. You know, talk about them openly to other clients, but I mean, obviously some of the diseases are notifiable, which, obviously then you, you, you would be telling people about the DA and the like about that .
That disease, wouldn't you? I don't know, is is notifiable diseases are something that is very it's something that's also done in in Europe and in Africa, or are we a country that tends to be a bit more on the ball with that than others? Yeah, it's, you know, you.
You refer to strangles, and if I talk about strangles to different audiences, veterinary lay or or or otherwise, . Often you get asked, well, wouldn't it make life easier if if strangles was notifiable, and then you would be obliged to report it. It doesn't mean you necessarily have to go public with it, and I think the truth about strangles is DRA could not cope with, the extent of strangles that we have, so I don't think there's little prospect of that.
There are obviously the kind of OIE listed disease of which African horse sickness, . It is clearly one West Nile EIA. There tends to be a global harmonisation about treating those as no diseases.
There are some diseases that some countries consider exotic and, and therefore notifiable, and interestingly Australia has flu as one of those, equine flu, but pretty much elsewhere in the world it isn't apart from New Zealand, Iceland. And then you have other diseases that kind of fall in the middle somewhere, so we treat at the moment. Contagious equine metritis and EVA is notifiable.
But in other countries across Europe included, they, they, they don't consider them in the same way. So, again, sometimes you have a bit of a mismatch between how different countries consider those diseases, so, and that presents issues . Both in obviously controlling disease within .
You know, a trading bloc like the EU, but also, where, where you're dealing with infections across into third countries if you like, . There tends to be much more harmonisation there. Although it does depend on What the importing country considers to be important and often those diseases.
And, and others will, will all be listed and you have to be able to certify that, whilst you might not have country freedom, you've at least got premises freedom. Great, OK, we've, we've got a question from Chris. Given the number of migratory birds that come from endemic areas, why has it taken so long to reach the UK?
Is it simply down to climate change? That's a good question. I don't think I, I, I have the answer, and I suspect we're .
You know, perhaps our surveillance is not as As great as it as it could be, . You know, are we necessarily looking in, in the right places, . I, I, I, I don't know why, why it hasn't appeared.
I mean, if you look at the, the North American situation, you, you, you have this incursion and, and the presumption is that there was some sort of transfer of. Again, we don't know what, but the virus that appeared there in 1999 was so closely related to what had occurred in Israel just the year before. The assumption is that something moved probably on an aeroplane from Israel to to .
North America, New York, and then once it got into that local ecology, it, it just was found a way to be very, very successful and to transfer. And we know from some of the other work that we've done. Looking at things like equine flu modelling.
Lots of times it can get in but not get established and burn itself out very quickly, and it's just a matter of chance very often and just finding the right niche. And what we don't know is perhaps is global warming going to actually mean that we just increase that that chance of it taking off and and we may find that it does. Yeah Matthew's just wondering, is it because it only really affects corvidi species which are crows, I think.
We've obviously got a few RSPB guys in and I'm in with them as well, so I don't want us starting to try and kill all the birds, you know, so you've got lovely, lovely fens and bird reserves around your neck of the woods, haven't you? Yeah, I mean, I think the lessons again from North America are that, that the Corvids, if you like, were the Sentinels because they were the guys that were dropping out of the sky dead and were being found and, and what's interesting when you speak to the guys from America, as soon as you move out into the countryside, seeing dead crows was kind of not that big a deal, but horses going off their legs was, was much more of a, so if you like, depending where you are, the sentinel species that give you the first clue that you've got a problem. Does kind of change and It was really interesting looking at West Nile when it got into, got into Texas.
Depending which species you looked at, whether it was mosquitoes, humans, or, or horses, it gave you a totally different picture of how extensive that disease was and it was actually the horse that that demonstrated that it was, it was a very widespread infection in. 2002 or whenever it got into into Texas. And did that affect quite a lot of people as well, or, or you know, was it severe disease or yeah.
Yeah, they saw a corresponding peak as it as it moved, you know, across that continent. And interesting, it really took off when it got into the warmer southern states, particularly Florida, because obviously the vector seasons were much longer. They could maintain virus for longer and, and, and it caused real problems, yeah.
But as you were saying, not really as such a zoonotic disease because it's the vector rather than it passing, you know, from the horse almost. Or is he still classed as zoonotic? Yeah, I think it, I think it is because probably the bird is the source of virus, the mosquitoes, the vector and ourselves and the horse are just the.
The end host. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, I, I was forgetting about the birds there. And Grace.
I think if anybody's got any more questions, feel free to give us some feedback if you've if you've enjoyed today. Just to let you know, we have got the next in the series of the MSD equine series, just jumping over November, and we're going to have the next one in December, it's the 10th of December. I know many of you will have registered for this whole series, so you'll have registered for this as well.
We've got inflammatory airway disease in the horse. Definitions, diagnosis and management and Richard, you'd be pleased to know yet another of your alumni, we've got Tim Brazil speaking on that, so, just a couple of years older than us, I think he was, he was in 4th or 5th year when I started vet school, so I don't know if you, if you crossed at all there, but Tim's an excellent lecturer, and I think people were really, Enjoy that webinar, so, looking forward to seeing you on that. Obviously, do let your friends and colleagues know if, if they've not quite caught on that we're doing this series, it's going to be going on right until, February and some really good webinars on there.
I know you've, you will have registered for those, but just really, again, I suppose, thanking MSD for making this possible. It's been a, a great series thus far, another fantastic lecture. From you, Richard, it's, you know, I don't see horses really at all.
I do dermatology and dogs and cats, but I think this is so appropriate and very much crosses over into the other species as well that we, we really need to have an epidemiological approach to disease as well, especially with these sort of diseases that can be so crippling when they, when they hit. So to, to actually be looking for them and trying to put in place, some disaster management before it hits, I think is, you know, completely sensible and, you know, thanks for all the great work you're doing in this area. Well, thank you very much, Antony, and it's been a real pleasure tonight and I hope people have enjoyed it.
Yeah, we've got Jeffrey saying, many thanks for a really interesting webinar, very interesting thank you from Peter, er interesting and applicable to all species, fascinating presentation, thank you. So unfortunately, Richard, first webinar, you can't hear the tumultuous applause, but people have really enjoyed it anyway.
