Your pet may send you to the hospital

 
These days, owning a pet for companionship or as status symbol is commonplace. Sometimes, too, in crime-infested neighbourhoods, people own pets for security.

Indeed, people and animals have a long history of living together and bonding. A few years ago, Israeli archeologists dug up what they said was a 12,000-year-old human skeleton buried with its hand resting on the skeleton of a six-month-old wolf puppy. Such is the bond between animals and humans.

The general belief is that there are health benefits to owning pets, both in terms of psychological well-being and development, as well as physical health benefits.

Happy times with pets

Experts in human-animal interactions say studies suggest that four-legged friends can help to improve our cardiovascular health. A study looked at 421 adults who had suffered heart attacks. A year later, the scientists found that dog owners were significantly more likely to still be alive than were those who did not own dogs, regardless of the severity of the heart attack.

Another study looked at 240 married couples. Those who owned a pet were found to have lower heart rates and blood pressure, whether at rest or when undergoing stressful tests, than those without pets.

Again, therapists and researchers say children with autism are sometimes better able to interact with pets, and this may help in their interactions with people. Such is the greatness of owning a pet!

And the music changes

Despite these awesome advantages, experts express concerns about the possible health fallout of owning a pet. Perhaps to underscore this, September 28 has been set aside as the World Rabies Day, and it aims to, among other things, raise awareness about the impact of rabies on humans and animals. Indeed, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Mrs. Fatima Bamidele, says at least eight people in four local government areas in Cross River State have died of rabies in recent times.

Apart from rabies, the list of diseases that can be passed from animals to humans is astounding, and they range from skin conditions like ringworm to plagues, diarrhoea-causing bugs like Salmonella, Campylobacter and Clostridium difficile (a harmful bacterium that produces toxins that attack the lining of the intestine). Pet owners can also be infected with more exotic and health-threatening ailments like leptospirosis (a rare and severe bacterial infection whose symptoms can take two to 26 days to develop, and may include dry cough, fever and headache); toxoplasmosis (a rare but serious blood infection) and monkeypox — an animal cousin of smallpox.

Animals can also infect their owners with yersinia pseudotuberculosis (which causes appendicitis-like abdominal pain), cryptosporidiosis enteritis (an infection of the small intestine with the parasite Cryptosporidium that causes diarrhoea, accompanied by abdominal cramping and nausea), and Mycobacterium avium complex (a group of bacteria that are related to tuberculosis and can severely affect those infected by HIV).

According to doctor of veterinary medicine, Stephen Hambali, these diseases can pose problems like severe diarrhoea, brain infections, and skin lesions. Hambali also expresses concern about the possible spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria between humans and animals.

For instance, he notes, a domestic cat in California was found to be carrying a dangerous strain of the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (a staphylococcus germ that does not get better with the first-line antibiotics that usually cure staph infections).

The vet doctor warns against acquisition of exotic pets, which, he notes, is now common among the affluent. “When you look at a dog and a cat and probably a rabbit, we know about them pretty much. We know what infectious diseases they carry. But when you get farther from them, the risks are greater,” he says.

Hambali says such exotic animals include hedgehogs, hamster (a rodent), prairie dog (in reality, a burrowing rodent native to the grasslands of North America), some amphibians and imported mice.

An online portal, artsonearth.com, lists the top 10 exotic animals as, Sugar gliders (marsupials from northeast Australia), Kinkajou (nocturnal rainforest mammal), Squirrel monkey (from Central and South America), Mona monkey (a West African native), Chimpanzee , Hyacinth macaw (South American native), Bengal cat (a hybrid creation featuring pre-designed genetic characteristics that are crossbred with the likes of something more exotic, such as the Asian leopard cat); reptiles like Ball python (worth $40,000), Reticulated python (from Thailand and Indonesia, and said to represent the longest known species of snake in the animal kingdom) and White Lion.

At-risk-group

Doctors warn that a person’s age and health status may affect his immune system, increasing his or her chances of getting diseases from animals. Infants and young children, pregnant women, people with weakened immune systems (like those living with HIV or those undergoing chemotherapy), and those who have undergone organ transplantation are in this category.

Protect yourself

The Medical Director of GoodNews Hospitals, Festac Town, Lagos, Dr. Chris Ayandolu, says the same general principles of keeping healthy applies when handling a pet. He advises people to wash hands and use hand sanitiser after playing with or feeding the pet. He also warns that pets should not be fed in the kitchen, lest anybody mistakes the leftover for edible stuff.

Hambali says if your dog or cat has diarrhoea, wash your hands carefully after cleaning up faeces, and clean floors and other surfaces with a mild bleach solution. You should also ask your vet doctor to test your pet for Salmonella.

The doctors also advise pet owners to avoid flea and tick-control products that contain organophosphate pesticides — some of the most common and most toxic insecticides that can affect neurodevelopment and growth in children.

The experts also advise pet owners against kissing their pets, or allowing the pets to lick any part of their bodies. Ayandolu recounts the experience of a patient of his who developed septicaemia, a blood infection, after allowing her dog to lick her surgical incision.

Hambali also says that feeding a dog or cat with raw meat can lead to infection with Salmonella, Campylobacter and other bugs that the pet can then spread around the household.