By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
New Mexico is home to a range of zoonotic diseases, or illnesses that can spread between people and animals.
Among the illnesses that people can pick up from other creatures in New Mexico are West Nile virus, plague, tularemia, hantavirus and rabies.
New Mexico Public Health Veterinarian Dr. Erin C. Phipps will give a presentation on zoonotic disease at the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s free “Wildlife Wednesday” presentation on Aug. 9.
Phipps will address how zoonotic diseases are transmitted and what people can do to prevent them.
Phipps has served as public health veterinarian at the New Mexico Department of Health since January. Before that, she worked for 11 years at the New Mexico Emerging Infections Program doing infectious disease surveillance. She also has clinical experience as a veterinarian.
The Emerging Infections Program is a partnership between the NM Department of Health and the University of New Mexico. Phipps said the program is one of ten across the country in which state health departments partner with academic institutions.
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is a zoonotic disease present in New Mexico. Deer mice are the main carriers of hantavirus in the state. The virus is found in mice droppings and urine.
A person may get HPS by breathing in the virus. The health department warns infections can happen when droppings or urine containing the virus are stirred up and the virus is put into the air as mist or dust.
“We are having a bad year with hantavirus,” Phipps said. “I think we’re up to 7 cases this year, average years are usually around two or three cases. So we’ve had quite a few cases. Most of them have been in Western New Mexico, kind of west-central.”
Phipps said New Mexico has seen a couple of cases of tularemia in dogs this year, but is seeing a lighter than normal incidence of the disease.
Known as “rabbit fever,” tularemia is a bacterial disease commonly found in rodents, rabbits and hares. People may become infected through the bite of infected insects including fleas and ticks or by handling sick animals.
New Mexico hasn’t experienced any reported cases of plague this year, Phipps said.
Plague is an infectious disease of animals and humans caused by a bacterium. People usually get plague from the bite of a rodent flea that is carrying plague bacteria or by handling an infected animal.
Although plague is a rare disease, about half of U.S. cases each year occur in New Mexico, according to the state health department. Antibiotics are effective against plague, but if an infected person is not treated promptly the disease can be life-threatening.
“Even though we had a light year with plague and tularemia, I think that’s probably a good topic to discuss in terms of prevention,” Phipps said. “They’re endemic, they’re around.”
New Mexico is also home to several different strains of rabies, Phipps said.
“We do have skunk rabies especially in the eastern part of the state,” Phipps said. “We have some fox rabies coming in from Arizona. And interestingly, we have a brand new variant of rabies that’s been found twice in Lincoln County.”
New Mexico has a lower incidence of rabies than on the East Coast. Phipps said she will address what people should know about rabies and when they should get shots after higher risk exposures.
Although different strains of rabies can infect different species, Phipps said they generally don’t spread far. “It’s interesting that different strains do better in different species,” she said. “It’s not well understood. So a rabid fox could get in a fight with a skunk and the skunk might get the fox rabies strain, but it’s unlikely to then spread among other skunks. So skunks kind of transmit the skunk strain, and foxes have the fox strain.”
Although there was a rabies strain that was adapted to dogs, Phipps said it’s been eliminated in the United States. “You can kind of tell where that rabies came from,” Phipps said. “So, for example, if you have a rabid dog, we can do tests on the virus itself and we can say, ‘oh, a bat bit the dog,’ or ‘the dog must have gotten in a fight with a rabid skunk,’ because it’s a skunk strain or a bat strain.”
Some rabid foxes have bitten people in New Mexico but they’ve been treated with the proper shots and haven’t become infected.
New Mexico is seeing some cases of West Nile virus this summer, Phipps said. “We do typically see the highest case count in late summer, so August, September. And we did get our first cases at the very end of July. We are seeing the cases coming in still, so our numbers each year fluctuate, we have some years without too many and other years with more. Presumably associated with rainfall and weather patterns.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Nile virus is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States. It is most commonly spread to people by the bite of an infected mosquito. While most people who get infected don’t feel sick, about 1 out of 150 infected people develop a serious, sometimes fatal, illness.
Phipps said she will talk about New Mexico’s experience with West Nile in recent years, as well as what the state is experiencing this year and how people can protect themselves.
Phipps’s presentation will start at 5:30 p.m. Wed., Aug. 9 at the Marble Brewery’s Northeast Heights Taproom, at 9904 Montgomery Blvd NE, Albuquerque.