GMAC 5.16.23 Minutes Final Draft

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game animals, you know, you sometimes see the worms especially in those back muscles over there. They do pick up parasites – part of what they’re foraging and savaging, you know, they’ll eat other animals and other things – they’ll pick up parasites and a lot of those parasites spend time migrating throughout the body. So, you might see the white milk spots in the liver, um, and then you can also see sometimes the little white spots in the muscle tissue and that right there is a old disease that has been eradicated from our domestic piggery in the United States and that’s trichinosis. So that was the number one reason why people say make sure you cook your pork really well because we’re very similar to pigs and that parasite can be unleashed in us. Tape worms as well too, is another one we have to worry about so basically if you use proper food handling, you should be OK with all that, but, again, that’s the parasite issue right there, um, moving along – there’s a couple of bacterial diseases. One is leptospirosis. Here in Hawaii we have the highest per capita of the United States of human incidences of leptospirosis and I believe that also correlates with animal’s species as well. When I was in private practice in Georgia I saw maybe 2 cases of leptospirosis in the twelve years I was there and it presented in dog ain’t doing right (ADR) and it was kidney failure and the only reason why we picked it up was the dog was there for orthopedic surgery – we did some blood work and low and behold the kidneys were shutting down and, um, we were able to diagnosis it and get back to, oh, by the way the raccoons and squirrels romp on the trees and they’ll go to the bathroom so urinate and that’s how they pick it up. And it was a different zero bar than we’ve even heard of – with the vaccines available for species they do not cross protect so there were several sub-species and here in Hawaii we’ve got sub-species I’ve never even heard of before – and they can infect multiple species – you just don’t know till you get sick, fortunately there are treatments for it. I think the biggest shortfall I see – the hunters – people out in wading through streams, hikers – we need to be advocates for our own health because one thing that I found is in our medical community – not to dis them – but a lot of them maybe didn’t train in tropical areas – maybe in the Mid-West and so quite often I have to tell people – if you have flu-like symptoms, if you’re a hunter, if you’re out in some of the streams that are here and aching joints and your doctor just can’t figure it out, please, please, please demand to be tested for leptospirosis and brucellosis which is another bacterial disease and just advocate for yourself because if either one of those are allowed to be prolonged without proper treatment it can really put a hurting on you and with the leptos over here, ah, when I came back over here we would see it a lot in dogs. A lot of dogs would be drinking out of the stream water or whatever and they’ll become infected and I would say that it also presented differently here in Hawaii, um, about 2/3rds of the dogs would come in with bloody diarrhea would be parvo virus and 1/3 will be lepo and we can still pick that up from their secretions and excretions as well – so those dogs also went into isolation and we had to get on up to make sure that we didn’t expose ourselves. In people it can also cause abortions and in the ones in Hawaii it was more of a liver failure rather than kidney failure and then there were some other SIRA virus that will do both, so that’s kind of a scary one. Open wounds, mucus membranes – a perfect way to pick that up, um, that also goes along with the more serious bacterial one would be brucellosis, and, unfortunately we have and I’ve known people that have personally become infected with it, um, a couple of my veterinarian co- workers have had brucellosis. One even also had lepto. I said, well, which was worse – the lepto or the brucellosis? And he said, definitely the broccolis. Hunters will pick that up by, you know, your field dressing animals if you nick your hands, if you have open wounds, it can be spread through inhalation so,it’s a little bit more unusual but that would affect more – see the people at Kulana that are slaughtering the feral pigs that come through there – we get the blood samples from all the pigs and inevitably we frequently see the wild pigs carrying both leptospirosis and pseudo rabies, and as far as the brucellosis is concerned as the going through 8