PSITTACOSIS

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 19623, 3 February 1936, Page 4

PSITTACOSIS

OUTBREAK IN MELBOURNE TRANSMITTED BY COCKATOOS. Melbourne is suffering from an outbreak of psittacosis, a lung infection contracted from parrots, and nearly 20 cases have been admitted to hospital, though not all have been yet definitely diagnosed as psittacosis. The outbreak has been traced to a large batch of su'phur-crcsted cockatoos brought to Melbourne within the last two months, and it is considered that the outbreak is under control. The only Australian research on this strange disease has been made at the Walter and Elizabeth Institute, Melbourne, and Dr. P. M. Burnet, of that institute, has taken charge of the present epidemic. He said that the main symptoms of the disease in its serious form were diarrhoea, headache, and a general feeling of being out of sorts. Sometimes there was a slight cough. Serious cases produced an illness of three or four weeks, with high fever. Fairly frequently cases were fatal. Mild cases were similar to a slight attack of influenza. "Recently acquired white parrots," said Dr. Burnet, "should be regarded with suspicion. All the cases of psittacosis reported have been associated with white parrots caught this season. Sick cockatoos should not be handled by human beings. Every sick cockatoo should be killed. Psittacosis rarely attacks children." Dr. Burnet said that most wild Australian parrots and cockatoos had the disease in a mild form. It became serious when the birds were brought into captivity and, as often happened, were kept under bad conditions. Attention was directed to Australia as a source of psittacosis in 1933, when a shipment of budgerigars, caught near Adelaide, fell sick on arrival at California, and were found to be suffering from psittacosis. Dr. Burnet then examined birds purchased from dealers in Melbourne and Adelaide, and found psittacosis virus in rosellas, grass parrakeets and cockatoos. The birds were not sick and were apparently merely "carriers." This means that the birds were immune to the disease themselves; but Dr. Burnet expressed his belief that they might pass the infection on to a susceptible bird. If so, an epidemic would break out, the virus gaining virulence with each case it passed through. Last year this occurred with a shipment of parrots consigned to London; many birds died on the voyage, and the remainder had to be destroyed on arrival. In birds, the disease usually takes the "typhoid" form; the bird mopes, wastes, suffers from dysentry, refuses to eat, loses its feathers, and dies.