Dog breeders and foreigners moving to South Africa are barking mad at the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs after its officials destroyed or sent back their precious pets on the basis of a dodgy veterinary test.
In the past four months, quarantine facilities have been crowded with dogs being brought into the country at great expense while their owners await the outcome of tests for leishmania, a parasitic disease that kills both humans and animals.
John Fulton, a Tanzanian veterinarian, said the South African tests carried out at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in Pretoria were inaccurate and ”a lot of animals have been put down that should not have been put down”.
Fulton had to put down two dogs destined for South Africa last December after Onderstepoort advised their owner they had tested positive for leishmania. Last week, a laboratory in the United Kingdom, where he sent blood samples of the two dogs for checking, told him the tests were negative and the dogs did not have the disease.
”I am very sceptical about the Onderstepoort tests,” Fulton said. ”Tanzania is leishmania-free, but they insist our dogs are testing positive. Either there’s a problem with their tests, or there’s a big epidemic and thousands of people should be dying.”
The World Health Organisation believes up to 12-million people around the world are affected by the disease, but many are unaware they are carriers because the symptoms often do not manifest. It is most prevalent in southern Europe, where several thousand people are infected each year.
An immunosuppressant, its most common forms are cutaneous leishmania, which causes skin sores, and the more serious visceral form, which attacks the spleen, liver and bone marrow.
The organisation says recorded cases have increased significantly since the early 1990s, because of the ”leishmania-HIV/Aids co-infection, which is emerging as an extremely serious, new disease.
”HIV/Aids and visceral leish-mania are locked in a vicious circle of mutual reinforcement. On the one hand, leishmania quickly accelerates the onset of Aids and shortens the life expectancy of HIV-infected people. On the other, HIV spurs the spread of visceral leishmania.”
The parasite is spread between animals and humans by phleboto-mine sandflies. Scientists predict climate change will extend suitable conditions for sandflies and the disease will spread.
Spokesperson Steve Galane said the agriculture department was worried about the spread of leishmania to humans, but only one case of the cutaneous form has been reported in a person, in the Western Cape in 1979. The visceral form was diagnosed in a dog from Durban in 1964, and in another from the Free State in 1987.
Galane said positive tests on imported dogs started increasing dramatically from September last year. There was an acknowledged 10% chance that the Onderstepoort tests were false, so 31 serum samples were sent to a UK laboratory in December.
”The results of the UK tests showed the Onderstepoort test is possibly over-sensitive. They also showed we must not disregard positive or suspect positive results from Onderstepoort, but investigate further.”
Onderstepoort was establishing a new test that would give more consistent results, ”but this process takes time”.
This is cold comfort for breeders and owners who have had to put down their pets, or send them to other homes. The department said 13 dogs had tested positive in the past four months, but Anna Youds — a Western Cape dog breeder who started investigating after her Great Dane had to be sent back to Tanzania — believes there are more.
In November, she put an advertisement on www.showdog.com asking people with similar experiences to contact her. ”People whose dogs have been euthanised got in touch. They ranged from the bitter to the despairing,” she said. Dogs that survived were kept in tiny kennels at quarantine centres for months before being rerouted to other homes.
Duncan O’Harmse, a supervisor at import company Global Paws, said bringing dogs into South Africa had become ”a nightmare. Testing for leishmania has been done for many years but suddenly, since last October, just about every dog tests positive. Something is not right.”
Most dogs were given a clean bill of health before arriving in South Africa and then had to be sent back, at considerable expense.
South Africa’s quarantine facilities usually cater for the importation of one or two dogs a week, but in the past four months, 77 dogs were quarantined at the Johannesburg station alone. Youds said the Cape Town facility was similarly crammed.
Youds imported her three-and-a-half-year-old bitch, Tamu, from Tanzania last October. Fulton certified her disease-free before she left Dar es Salaam, but Onderstepoort said the tests for leishmania were positive and Youds was advised: ”Your dog either needs to be euthanised in the quarantine station or sent back to Tanzania.”
Youds persuaded Fulton to adopt Tamu and he now plans to send new blood samples for testing in the UK.
Other pet owners have not been so lucky: Youds has met people who have had to rehome their pets overseas. A man from India turned down his new engineering job in South Africa and went back when he learnt he could not settle here with his two dogs.
Youds said dogs from Europe did not have to go into quarantine here or be tested by Onderstepoort, despite the fact that leishmania is particularly prevalent in the Mediterranean countries.