Alister Rodgers dies of Hendra virus after 2 weeks in coma

QUEENSLAND vet Alister Rodgers lost his battle with the lethal Hendra virus overnight, dying after two weeks in a coma.

State Health Minister Paul Lucas today sent his deepest sympathies to Dr Rodgers' widow, Linda, and children Courtney and Duncan.

“This is a terrible tragedy for his family and they are being supported by the staff of Princess Alexandra Hospital,” Mr Lucas told Parliament this morning.

Dr Rodgers, of the Rockhampton Veterinary Clinic, was infected with the virus when he treated a sick filly - thought at the time to be suffering from snakebite - at the J4S stud in central Queensland on July 28.

Despite an experimental treatment with anti-viral drugs, he fell into a coma three weeks later.

Scientists believe the rare disease is transmitted from fruit bats to horses, then on to humans exposed to blood and mucus.

Dr Rodgers is the fourth person to die of the illness, which is known to have infected only seven Australians.

Nasty virus. I think this virus had a similar outbreak several years ago that brought all of us micro addicts together”

Never heard of this and I have horses, and I do paperwork for a Veterinarian.

Is it olnly known in Austrailia or is this world wide?

If more spread out, is there any type of good vaccine available?

What are the symptoms?

Did the filly pull out of the problem?

Hendra virus is an emerging exotic disease first described in 1994 in Hendra, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. In 1994, two outbreaks occurred in Queensland within one month of each other.

In one case, 21 horses were affected and 14 died or were euthanized after developing severe respiratory signs. Two humans were affected, one fatally. In the second case two horses were sickened and died and one person died following bouts of recurrent encephalitis.

A third case affected a 9 year old Thoroughbred mare in Queensland in January 1999. In the field, it affects horses and humans. Experimentally, cats and guinea pigs can be infected with the virus. The reservoir is fruit bats, which are subclinically affected.

Infectious agent: Formerly known as equine morbillivirus, this virus is now labeled “Hendra virus” and shares a unique genus, along with Nipah virus, in the Family Paramyxoviridae. The Hendra virus is an enveloped ssRNA virus.
More:

http://www.vet.uga.edu/vpp/ia/SRP/ERD/Hendra.html

Minimizing The Spread Of Deadly Hendra Virus

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2009) — CSIRO Livestock Industries’ scientists working at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL), in Geelong Victoria, have made a major breakthrough in better understanding how Hendra spreads from infected horses to other horses and humans.
More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090415102213.htm

Excellent synopsis. I believe in the outbreaks before involved a deaths of a veterinarian and a horse trainer. Australia did the research on the virus at their facility, akin to Plum Island, that isolated the virus and the origin and reservoir of the virus. There is no vaccine that I am aware at the current time. I got the best guess back in 99’ when I hypothesized that the outbreak was a morbillivirus. Symptoms? I know the animals develop a serious pneumonia and circulatory collapse within 24 hours and are dead shortly thereafter. One can safely say that usually the first symptom is death. Since the fruit bat is the reservoir and the bat's habitat SE Asia/Austrailia, the US has not reported similar disease in horses.

FYI, the H1N1 virus affects cats, ferrets and pet birds...I haven't seen any reporting of this yet but it has gone relatively unnoticed so far. Humans can serve as a source of infection to their pets.

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