Peste des petits ruminants (PPR)

• PPR has recently killed 60 sheep and goats in the highland pastures of the Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh.

ABOUT PPR

• It is a highly contagious viral disease.
• It is caused by a morbillivirus closely related to the rinderpest virus.
• It affects goats, sheep, and some wild relatives of domesticated small ruminants, as well as camels.
• Symptoms:
  • It causes immunosuppression, which makes affected animals more likely to pick up other infections.
  • Clinical signs of PPR include fever, eye and nasal discharges, sores in the mouth, diarrhoea, listlessness, respiratory signs (coughing and pneumonia), Abortion and death
  • Fatality rates can range from 20% and can reach as high as 90% .
• Transmission
  • when a susceptible animal inhales the virus from infected animals’ coughing and sneezing.
  • indirectly through contact with infected objects (fomites) such as feed troughs, bedding
  • secretions from the eyes, nose, and mouth and faeces of infected animals.
• The PPR virus does not infect humans.