Animal database alerts to disease outbreak, bioterrorism
Published: November 21, 2005
The chain sees about 2% of the nation’s cats and dogs — about 3.5 million pets — each year. Information about these pets is entered into a nationwide computerized database, which is updated daily with new information from the estimated 70,000 pets that visit the animal hospital chain each week.
Funded with a $1.2-million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Glickman devised a special software system to mine Banfield’s database. With just a keystroke, scientists can watch the pattern of any illness — whether it’s kennel cough or canine flu — moving through the pet population, like a wave rippling around a sports arena.
But the software does more than search for ailments that have been diagnosed: It scans the database for certain clinical signs — sudden blindness, perhaps, or unsteady gait — so that outbreaks of new or known diseases can be detected. “This adds another layer of protection,” explains Hugh Lewis, president of Datasavant, a sister company to the Banfield hospitals and a veterinarian who helped develop the pet network.
It’s possible, for example, that the surveillance system would provide the first sign that the Asian bird flu currently in the news had arrived here in the U.S. That’s because cats are susceptible to the virus. When the initial epidemic hit in Thailand, thousands of chickens were killed off and their carcasses fed to zoo cats. Tigers caught flu from eating the chicken, and died. “So we know the potential is there for cats and other animals to become part of the flu cycle,” says Glickman.
The network’s database has already been tapped by the Department of Homeland Security. Last month, Glickman got a call from government officials asking about any unusual sicknesses in dogs and cats in the Washington, D.C., area. The officials had detected a bacterium in the air that causes tularemia, a highly infectious disease that triggers severe respiratory illnesses and can be fatal.
“It coincided with an antiwar demonstration, so it raised all sorts of hackles about what this might mean,” says Glickman. “It turned out to be a false alarm.”
But, he adds, such a hypothetical attack would be easier to pinpoint now that there are two parallel detection systems — animals as well as people. “If both show something, then you can be pretty sure something is indeed happening,” he says.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
If you like this, you'll love Good Animal News:
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: