Vaccination against Hæmorrhagic Septicæmia of Bovines

Abstract

HÆMORRHAGIC septicæmia kills many thousands of cattle and buffaloes in Asia each year. Vaccination with conventional products such as formalin-killed cultures of Pasteurella multocida have not been considered an effective form of prophylaxis although practised for the past thirty years or so. The serological typing of strains of the causative organism and studies on its antigenic structure have not been pursued extensively in Asiatic countries in the past. In recent studies sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, strains of P. multocida recovered from field cases of the disease in south-east Asia were typed by the mouse protection method of Roberts¹; 14 Burmese, 3 Indian, 2 Pakistanian, 2 Malayan, 2 Siamese and one Indonesian strains were found to be type I. Only one other serotype was recovered from bovines—a single strain of type IV from Burma.