African Horse Sickness
01.07.2025 11:32:41 121
African horse sickness (AHS) is a viral (transmissible) disease of horses and other equids, characterized by fever, damage to the respiratory and circulatory organs with hemorrhagic diathesis, edema and high mortality.
Horses and zebras are most susceptible to the disease, mules are less susceptible, donkeys do not get sick. Foals are more sensitive to the disease, but young animals from immune mothers are resistant in the first 5-6 months. AHS is mainly observed in the summer, especially in the hot and rainy season.
Blood-sucking woodlice and mosquitoes can be carriers of the pathogen, and birds, mammals and insects are reservoirs of infection in nature. The pathogen, entering the body through the skin with an insect bite, multiplies at the site of introduction, penetrates into organs and tissues rich in blood vessels, from where it is carried by the blood throughout the body.
The incubation period is 5-7 days. The disease can occur in several forms:
- febrile - characterized by an acute course, high temperature, intermittent fever, muscle fibrillation and conjunctivitis, the animal dies in 5-7 days;
- pulmonary - characterized by an acute course with pneumonia, high body temperature, depression and damage to the respiratory organs;
- cardiac (edematous) - characterized by a subacute course, damage to the heart, edema in the head, neck, abdomen and limbs; mixed - characterized by respiratory and circulatory disorders in the heart and lungs.
If AHS is suspected (diagnosis is confirmed), measures are taken in accordance with veterinary rules for the implementation of preventive, diagnostic, restrictive and other measures, the establishment and cancellation of quarantine and other restrictions aimed at preventing the spread and eliminating foci of African horse sickness.
For the purposes of prevention, a systematic fight against arthropod carriers of the infection is carried out.
State Institution "Mendykarinsk District Territorial Inspectorate of KVKiN Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Kazakhstan", Borovskoye village, Altynsarina str. 83, tel.: 2-40-64, 2-42-67.