Horse sickness

[Celeste Murray <celestem@badgermining.co.za>]

There is no law requiring you to vaccinate, but you would be stupid not to
as your horse will die!
We have an area in the Cape where you are NOT allowed to vaccinate as it is
our quaratine area to the outside world (+-100km around the quaratine
station) and there are strict laws when it comes to moving horses into and
out of the area.
The disease cannot be passed from horse to horse so non-vaccinated horses
competing with vaccinated ones will not have any effect on each other, if an
un-vaccinated horse goes into an AHS area then you are in trouble. There are
little pockets scattered around the country where people have no need to
vaccinate, usually the size of a few farms, these farms are often bought by
large breeders, which illiminates the need to vaccinate (at great cost) lots
of breeding stock that will never leave the farm, in these cases only
youngsters will be vaccinated before being sold of the farm.
Actually the immunity doesn't last a full year but for a few crucial weeks
when AHS is most prevelent, the rest of the year the (lets call it)
secondary immunity buildup from the annual vaccines protect the horse but
this is not enough to get through the bad period so you have to vaccinate
annually. After 16 yrs of age the horse will often have enough secondary
immunity builupd to only need vaccination every second year. For youngsters
they need at least three vaccinations before the age of two (preferably 2
vaccinations before 1 yr of age and the other the following year) before
they have a good chance of not being infected, although as I said before the
vaccine is no guantee of immunity.
The vaccine is produced at our own Equine Univarsity and is exported all
over Africa and in the case of the Barcelona Olympics even Europe. As far as
I know we are the only producers of the vaccine.

Celeste

I'D RATHER BE RIDING !
----- Original Message -----
From: <guest@endurance.net>
To: <ridecamp@endurance.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 5:00 PM
Subject: RC: RC; African Horse Sickness- Question for Tracey/Celeste


> Barb Peck bpeck@together.net
> Barb Peck
> bpeck@together.net
>
> Hi:
>
> Are you required by law (either local or
> national) to have your horses vaccinated yearly
> for AHS in order to compete in eventing/Dressage
> or Endurance.?
>
> It sounds like the immune response to this vaccine is a BIG
> one.  I wonder then, why does the protection only last 1 year?
>
> Just curious with this next question:
> does So.A make their own vaccines
> for AHS, or do Western or European countries make/market
> the vaccines?
>
> Regards,
> Barb
>
>
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