African Horse Sickness (AHS) kills 131 horses, infects many in Thailand

A disease identified as the African Horse Sickness (AHS) in Thailand, has killed over 100 horses as per the government's data, in the Southeast Asian country's first-ever sickness that struck only animals, confirmed an agency report. 

Director-general of the Department of Livestock Development, Sorawit Thanito, was quoted saying that the disease has only just arrived in the country. It’s something that the country has never witnessed before, he added. The infected horses were isolated and have been put under quarantine to limit the further spread of the disease, as per reports. More accurately, the government's tally listed 131 deaths of the horses, across four provinces, as the disease has proven to be contagious. 

Thanito further told the press conference that the authorities have scrambled to investigate the origin of the disease and identify how the virus emerged in Thailand, adding that the government detected the spread of the disease among the animals late March. The symptoms, Thanito said, as observed in the sick horses, was high temperature of over 39-degree celsius, bleeding in the eyes, and shortness of breath. He was quoted saying that there was also respiratory distress observed in the sick horses. The AHS although, cannot be related to COVID-19 disease in humans caused by the Coronavirus.

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Disease AHS originated in Africa

Thailand's status as an "AHS Free Country" has reportedly been suspended by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) as of March 27. According to OIE, the disease AHS originated in the central tropical regions of Africa and spread across Southern Africa and occasionally to North Africa, infecting the horses with the viral disease. The sickness has been recognized as highly infectious and fatal that affects horses, mules, and donkeys. Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan had their AHS-free statuses suspended in 2018. 

According to research led by Edward Rybicki, US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, "AHS continues to occur regularly in southern African countries, but the virus has also occasionally escaped its geographical limitations and extended further afield to countries in North Africa, the Middle East, the Arabian peninsula, South-West Asia and the Mediterranean region." According to research, it caused over 300,000 horse deaths in the Middle East and South-West Asia between 1959 and 1963 due to the outbreak of a pandemic.

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(with inputs from agencies)