Goat contagious abortion disease hits Kanchanaburi

KANCHANABURI: -- The Livestock Development Department has declared Kanchanaburi's Muang district as an outbreak zone after 63 goats in the area were found with brucellosis.

The department has also imposed a ban on the movement of goats, cattle and pigs in this district.

"We have put down the infected goats and their owners will be fairly compensated," the department's deputy director general Chaweewan Liawwijak said Wednesday.

She also called on goat farmers to wash their hands after contact with the goats to avoid the contagious disease.

-- The Nation 2006-07-05

brucellosis is usually a required vaccine for all cattle, goats, etc even in third world countries i.e. given by gov't vet offices and subsidized... thought thailand had a vaccine program?

the disease can cause abortions in women and painful sterilities among men....

I thought vaccination was mandatory. This happened not long ago (If I remember correctly) and it turned out that it was a bunch of goats that were illegally brought into Thailand from Myanmar. I hope if it is mandatory to vaccinate that they put down the owners and let the goats live!

Brucellosis is serious, but normally it is sufficient to be careful about hygeine to avoid contracting it.

I notice that, as usual, it is the movement of live animals from one place to another that is causing it to become a problem.

During the eradication programme time, about thirty years ago, a lot of vets in Britain contracted it from being called to help cows to deliver the malformed calf that was being aborted.

I got it , and I think that I probably contracted it when a vial of the S19 vaccine was being opened by a vet at my farm and broke and splashed us. We washed thoroughly, but it would have only taken an imperceptibly-minute drop of the spray to land on an eyeball for it to enter my bloodstream. Or it was from the one abortion calving that we had with a cow that I had just bought in.

Anyway it well spoiled a dozen years of my life, with the resulting bouts of miserable depression.

I didn't get the violence urges that were reported in some cases, but it was still a real sod.

So I am glad to see the Thais take it seriously.