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Strangles Awareness Week takes the BEST approach to tackling strangles
Abstract
Strangles Awareness Week takes place in the first week of May, and is a collaborative campaign to help manage and prevent strangles infection. Strangles is the most common equine infectious disease worldwide, which can cause suffering and death to infected horses and enormous stress and expense for owners and businesses. This year's Strangles Awareness Week is sharing the BEST approach to preventing and containing outbreaks through four practical actions. Redwings and The British Horse Society, two of the Strangles Awareness Week collaboration team, provide an overview of this year's Strangles Awareness Week and steps that veterinarians, horse owners and yard managers can promote and follow to help keep horses safe from this debilitating disease.
Strangles continues to be a disease which presents unique and often frustrating challenges for horse owners, yard managers and vets. Thankfully, ongoing research has provided new knowledge and technologies that have driven forward our ability to both prevent and manage the infection in the past decade. As exciting developments emerge, a secondary challenge is to encourage wider use of the latest practices, opportunities and products that enable us to make progress against a particularly intransigent disease that remains far more common than it needs to be.
Strangles Awareness Week was developed specifically to address this challenge in positive and engaging ways. The campaign has grown rapidly since its inception in 2020, and in 2023 it reached more than eight million people through digital and print media in a collaborative and multi-national effort.
Strangles Awareness Week promotes openness and understanding around the disease, and encourages the use of practical, proven steps to help stem the relentless circulation of a potentially life-threatening illness around the UK and beyond. This year, Strangles Awareness Week is focussing on the BEST way to protect horses from the risk of strangles through four actions:
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