ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies animal diseases that are host specific and reviews the effects of various human diseases on animals. It also identifies history, etiologic, human Infection, diagnosis, public health aspects and therapeutic aspects of each disease important to epidemiology and prevention. In spite of the geographic and climatic variables and eating habits of the two countries, one dimension remained constant: both clinical entities were due to C. perfringens. Clostridium perfringens type A food-borne disease is usually short in duration and is characterized by watery diarrhea and abdominal pain with cramps. C. perfringens gastroenteritis, which characteristically is afebrile, should be differentiated from shigellosis and salmonellosis, which are commonly febrile infections. C. perfringens gastroenteritis is neither euzoonotic nor a true zoonosis, because animals do not play a direct role in the epidemiology. As an adjunct to C. perfringens gastroenteritis, there is a growing realization that other clostridial organisms are emerging in association with other gastrointestinal diseases.
