History of veterinary public health in Australasia.

Abstract

The geographic isolation of Australasia has played a significant role in preventing the introduction of exotic diseases or in limiting the spread of many diseases which entered after settlement. Some infections such as psoroptic mange, tuberculosis and brucellosis became widely dispersed and some were ultimately to require novel methods to curtail them, e.g. greater use of rail and road transportation to convey stock, improved methods to locate and muster livestock in bush terrain (helicopters), improved diagnostic tests and the introduction of effective methods for tracing diseases found at abattoirs to the farms of origin. From the 1860s to the 1880s, there were such high mortalities from anthrax in Australia that a business syndicate associated with the Pasteur Institute established a laboratory in Sydney to produce anthrax vaccine from 1890 to 1898. The two-dose vaccine developed by Pasteur was unable to compete with a single dose spore vaccine later pioneered locally by Gunn and McGarvie-Smith. The most important achievements in veterinary public health in Australasia have been the successful eradication of brucellosis, the virtual eradication of hydatid disease in New Zealand and Tasmania, the substantial progress made in the eradication of tuberculosis from all but small regions of Australasia, and the development of a commercial vaccine to prevent Q fever in humans.