| CASE
SIMULATION - SICK RABBITS By Corrie Brown, DVM, PhD, The University of Georgia, College of Veterinary Medicine This
case simulation is entirely fictional and designed for instruction
and increased awareness. |
| You are a field veterinary medical officer (VMO) employed by USDA. Your job is to inspect various facilities to ensure compliance with federal regulations. Another aspect of your job is to keep a watch out for anything unusual that could be an emerging disease or a foreign disease entering the U.S. You are making a routine inspection to ensure adequate health care at the Morgan County Fair, when you hear of some disturbing news. In the 4H pavilion, of 42 rabbits on exhibit, 5 have died and another 8 are very ill. The exhibitors are distraught and when they find out that you are a veterinarian, they beg for your help. |
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| You have no choice. You head for the rabbit pavilion, ready to be a disease detective. The first rabbit you see looks like this one: |
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| You enter the rabbit pavilion. People in the building look fairly distressed. A quick survey indicates that this building houses only rabbits. Other than a few Homo sapiens, rabbits are the only species in here. Looking at the husbandry, you notice that all the cages are fairly clean and that all rabbits have access to water and commercial rabbit feed. The cages are positioned such that many are next to one another so that quite few rabbits have nose-to-nose contact. Also, the bottoms of the cages are positioned such that feces can roll from just beneath the wire in one cage to just beneath the wire in another cage (in other words, they have potential access to one another's feces). |
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| Where do the rabbits come from? They come from all over the state. The sick and dead rabbits are not clustered from any particular geographic area. |
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| Time to examine the rabbits. Remember to examine the healthy rabbits, like this one, first. Why? |