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U.S. Uses Pets to Detect Biological Attack
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has funded Purdue University’s efforts to detect the signs of a biological attack or bird flu by monitoring pets, CNNMoney.com reported yesterday (see GSN, June 23). Banfield, a chain of pet hospitals, has joined Purdue in its efforts. Banfield’s database of 8 to 9 million pets is a resource for detecting disease outbreaks, according to CNN. “We hope that in using pets as sentinels we'll be able to pick something up that's important to human health,” said Hugh Lewis, Banfield senior vice president. Birds can transmit avian flu to humans, and more than 60 people have died of the disease recently in Asia. A 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million lives also originated in birds, according to CNN. The Banfield database is unique in the United States, said Larry Glickman, an epidemiology professor at Purdue and director of the surveillance system. As there is no nationwide database tracking human diseases, pets could provide an early indication of an outbreak, he said. Glickman is interested in using the 3-month-old surveillance system to track anthrax and tularemia, both of which are transmitted from animals to humans. He said he was contacted by the Homeland Security Department after tularemia was detected last month in Washington, D.C. (see GSN, Oct 5). No cases of tularemia turned up in the pet tracking system. However, the experience proved valuable, as Glickman said he found that he was unable to access data quickly. That has since been fixed, he said (Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com, Oct. 20).
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