“Keep These Diseases Out At All Costs”

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31060, 16 May 1966, Page 14

“Keep These Diseases Out At All Costs”

Professor B. C. Jansen, director of veterinary research and dean of the faculty of veterinary science at the Veterinary Research Institute at Onderstepoort, South Africa, who has come to New Zealand under the auspices of the Veterinary Services Council is interested in telling New Zealanders about diseases of animals in Africa, which, he says, New Zealanders should keep out of their country at all costs. They could be kept out of a country such as New Zealand, which was really an island, by the application of strict quarantine measures, he said. “We have had discussions with people here like Dr. S. Jamieson, director of the Animal Health Division of the Department of Agriculture, and he is fully aware of the requirements of quarantine measures sufficient to ensure the freedom of your country from these condiditions.”

Professor Jansen ‘said that one of the diseases was blue tongue. It was a disease of sheep characterised by fever, extreme malaise, swelling and ulceration of the lips and tongue, inflammation of the feet, loss of wool and a high mortality rate. Blue tongue was transmitted by insects called culicoides, which were small flies which moved only at night

Blue tongue caused serious losses among sheep, and in his opinion British sheep would be particularly susceptible to it “We have found that the indigenous sheep in Africa are fairly resistant but the imported sheep are extremely susceptible,” he said. “This disease is important to the extent that we have to prepare about 30m doses of vaccine a year to protect oit sheep.” A very serious disease of cattle was lumpy skin disease. Animals suffering from this disease showed discrete swellings of the skin and diffuse swellings of the limbs. These lumps also occurred in the udders of cows, in the genital organs of both cows and bulls and also in the lungs. Again there was a high mortality rate. The means of transmission of this disease from one animal to another was not entirely understood. After exhaustive research on the disease they had managed to develop a vaccine. Africa, he said, had foot-and-mouth disease, but South Africa, which had had the disease, was free of it at present

Professor Jansen, who is also chairman of the Veterinary Board in South Africa, scientific adviser to the South African Wool Board and a member of the scientific advisory council to the Prime Minister, will open the annual conference of the Veterinary Services Council tomorrow and will give a paper at a refresher course for club veterinarians on Wednesday on the subject of “Pneumonias of Sheep.” Although in his present

position Professor Jansen is concerned with the general direction of research, he said his particular line of research had been on the conditions caused by anaerobic bacteria —ln diseases like pulpy kidney, tetanus, black quarter and black disease which were caused by bacteria which grew in the absence of atmospheric oxygen. “Almost All Short” Asked whether there was a shortage of veterinarians in South Africa, Professor Jansen said that there was such a shortage all over the world, with the exceptions of Spain and Italy, which were trying to export them. It was difficult to say just how short they were in South Africa, he said, but there was an unequal distribution of them—there were many veterinarians in the cities in smallanimal practice. South Africa, he said, had one veterinary school which was turning out about 40 veterinarians a year. They were now thinking of increasing that output They had no deliberate recruitment campaign overseas, but veterinarians had come into the country from Germany and Britain.

His country, he said, had schemes under which farmers* co-operatives employed veterinarians on a guaranteed minimum income.