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PEDAGO
THESE“ NEW” VIRUSES THREATENING OUR HORSES
BY CÉLINE GUALDE
Climate change and the movement of equines across borders are helping diseases that France was once free of to spread. West Nile fever is one example, but things could get far worse: the arrival of African horse sickness in Europe would jeopardise the entire horse industry. Epidemiological surveillance networks have a crucial role to play in managing these threats.
On the website of the RESPE( the French equine epidemiological surveillance network), a long list of alerts scrolls by: confirmed cases of West Nile fever in the Gard, Vendée, Loire-
Atlantique and Deux-Sèvres, but also in Seine-et-Marne … On 4 September, an infected horse was reported in Brittany, a first for the region. Since West Nile appeared in the Camargue in 1962, the disease has kept gaining ground, inexorably moving north and blithely crossing the Loire:“ We’ re at nearly 450 cases in 2026,” Dr Jean- Marc Betsch, vice-president of the AVEF( the French equine veterinary association) and president of the RESPE, said in mid-October. West Nile fever is also known as West Nile encephalitis or meningoencephalitis. It is caused by an arbovirus: a virus transmitted by a common blood-feeding mosquito.“ West Nile is inoculated by the Culex mosquito, which is native to France,” explains Dr Jean- Marc Betsch.“ This mosquito infects birds – or is infected by them – by biting them, but it can also transmit the virus to horses or humans when it can’ t find a bird to bite.” Birds are said to be the reservoir of West Nile, because it is from them that the virus circulates. Humans and horses are accidental hosts.“ Mammals can be infected by the virus but do not transmit the disease, because their viraemia( the amount of virus present in their body) is too low,” says Jean-Marc Betsch.“ This is known as an epidemiological dead end. So strictly speaking, it isn’ t a contagious disease.”
THE SENTINEL HORSE For humans as for horses, treatments for West Nile are only symptomatic, mainly anti-inflammatories and drips.“ There is no vaccine for humans,” explains Jean-Marc Betsch.“ An effective vaccine has, however, been developed for horses, with two injections a month apart followed by an annual booster. A dose costs around a hundred euros.” As horses cannot spread the virus or infect other horses, vaccination is not compulsory, but it could be strongly recommended in future if West Nile keeps spreading. The RESPE has asked French laboratories to plan for 25,000 doses of vaccine for 2026, compared with 4,000 the previous year, and the laboratories have met that demand. The disease is regulated, as a category E disease, which means that all cases must be reported to the authorities( by approved veterinarians or testing laboratories), without this leading to quarantine or movement restrictions for the premises concerned. West Nile is subject to“ eventbased surveillance”: there is no systematic screening, but reported cases are recorded. This is very important for public health, because horses are epidemiological sentinels that alert the authorities to the presence of the virus in a given area. Surveillance and prevention measures can then be put in place because, although the disease is not transmitted from one human to another, it can be passed on inadvertently through blood transfusions or organ transplants. As the person
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