VIRULENT DISEASES

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 February 1935, Page 8

VIRULENT DISEASES

GERMS IN PARROTS AND SHEEP.

MELBOURNE, January 25. The disquieting fact that there were natural reservoirs in Australia of -three virus diseases which produced serious symptoms in man was revealed by Dr. ( F. Tvl. Burnet, of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, in an address Medical Science of Public Health section of the Science Congress. In two of the three, investigation had shown, ho said, that animals were widely infected, and were capable of infecting human beings if conditions became favourable. The third was also probably widely distributed. In an animal reservoir one of the difficulties of detection was that the virus produced scarcely any effect in the animal carried.

Dr. Burnet reported that, while only one case of psittacosis in a human being had been reported in Australia, investigation had shown that about 40 per cent, of the common parrots in Australia in the wild state were in-

fected with a virus tliut appeared to be in all respects similar to that responsible for human psittacosis, with

the one essential difference that it did not appear to be virulent so far as it affects human beings. A second grave disease which had appeared sporadically ’in Australia in human beings, he said, was sleepy sickness (not to be confused with the African sleeping sickness), in which the brain becomes inflamed. The disease was peculiar to Australia, and was recorded only from the west of New South Wales in the late summer and early autumn of 1917 and 1918. Dr. Burnet -produced considerable evidence, which he said, suggested, though it did not prove conclusively, that the source of infection was sheep, in which the virus did not produce dangerous symptoms. Endemic typhus similar .to typhus fever, but not so severe, was present in rats and mice in all parts of Aus-

tralia, Dr. Burnet said. He was engaged upon detailed investigation to determine, if possible, by what means such viruses infected human beings. His work was directed to the discovery of a means of combating such outbreaks if they arose.