Zoonoses

There are over 150 zoonoses carried by a wide variety of animals. The highest incidence of zoonoses is noticed in persons who come in close contact with animals or animal products or those who share with animals environments containing suitable vectors. Common zoonoses are anthrax, brucellosis, Chaga's disease, equine encephalomyelitis, equine infectious anaemia, foot-and-mouth disease, glanders, hydatid disease, leptospirosis, listeriosis, liver flukes, louping illness, lymphocytic choriomeningitis, Newcastle disease, psittacosis-ornithosis, Q fever, rabies, rat-bite fever, rift valley fever, ringworm, Rocky Mountain disease, Russian spring-summer virus, salmonellosis, scabies, schistosomiasis influenza, echinococcosis tapeworms, tick-bite fever, tick paralysis, toxocara, toxoplasmosis, trichinosis, tuberculosis, tularaemia, vesicular stomatitis, Warburg disease, Wesselsbron disease, typhoid, yellow fever, and plague. In spite of their varied nature these diseases have one common feature - in nature, they are transmissable from animals to man either directly or through animal products and sometimes through invertebrate vectors (insects, ticks, mites, molluscs). With the AIDS epidemic there has been an increase in the number of people with suppressed immune systems, a condition which raises susceptibility to all kinds of diseases, including the zoonoses. In developed countries where zoonoses are relatively rare, domestic animals and pets are a more common source of infection.