Outbreak-related Hendra virus infection in a NSW pet dog

Sherly Halim; Ben Polkinghorne; Greg Bell; Debra van den Berg; Vicky Sheppeard

doi:10.1071/phrp2541547

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Outbreak-related Hendra virus infection in a NSW pet dog

Sherly Halim ^A ^* , Ben Polkinghorne ^A , Greg Bell ^B , Debra van den Berg ^B and Vicky Sheppeard ^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Communicable Diseases Branch, Health Protection NSW, Sydney, Australia.

^B North Coast Public Health Unit, NSW Health, Australia, Port Macquarie, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: sherly.halim@sswahs.nsw.gov.au

Public Health Research and Practice 25, e2541547 https://doi.org/10.17061/phrp2541547

Published: 30 September 2015

2015 © Halim et al. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, which allows others to redistribute, adapt and share this work non-commercially provided they attribute the work and any adapted version of it is distributed under the same Creative Commons licence terms.

Abstract

Hendra virus (HeV) infection is a zoonosis of importance in Australia. An outbreak of HeV occurred on the mid-north coast region of New South Wales (NSW) in June and July 2013. Four unvaccinated horses on four separate properties were confirmed to have HeV infection. A pet dog that had close contact with one of the horses was also confirmed to be infected with HeV. This paper documents the response to the canine infection and the resulting change to the public health management of HeV infection.