[kellyhound]

"As I was dispensing scripts at the Tocumwal Pharmacy I heard a car beep driving past and looked up to see a koala sitting at the front door waiting to come in.

A customer was walking towards the door and as the door opened the koala walked in to do some local shopping after having made the short 150 metre walk from the treetops by the Murray River.

The koala was very relaxed and friendly and walked around the store for around 10 minutes. The local vet's wife was next door at IGA supermarket and called her husband who then contacted the right people for advice.

We were advised to let it do its thing and the koala left the pharmacy. The local community escorted the koala safely down the street where it was happy to climb up the nearest tree at the post office."

[miky4rmdabigstate]

Aww That's nice. Now, leave it alone until people come to pick it up and take it to safety

[Ninjavandal]

Yeah, that's it, morons, just allow him of her to wander back outside and possibly into traffic.

[Azimuth]

Poor babe.

She's just there for her chlamydia vaccine.

************************************************** ******
By Alice Klein

A single-jab vaccine could halt the chlamydia epidemic wiping out Australia’s koalas. It may even pave the way for a human chlamydia vaccine.

In trials, the new vaccine has been shown to slow the rate of new infections and treat early-stage disease.

A third of Australia’s koalas have been lost over the last two decades, largely due to the spread of chlamydia, which now affects between 50 and 100 per cent of wild populations. The sexually transmitted disease causes painful urinary tract inflammation, infertility and blindness.

Chlamydia in koalas is caused by Chlamydia pecorum, a bacterium that may have spread from livestock introduced from Europe. A similar bacterium, Chlamydia trachomatis, causes chlamydia in humans.

Antibiotics can be used to treat chlamydia in koalas, but they only work in early-stage disease, do not prevent re-infection, and they must be administered daily for at least 30 days in captivity.

Moreover, some infected koalas remain asymptomatic and are overlooked for treatment while they continue to spread the disease.

To address these problems, Peter Timms at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, and his colleagues have been developing a single-injection chlamydia vaccine that provides long-lasting protection. Koalas are injected with tiny fragments of C. pecorum bacteria to train their immune systems to fight chlamydia.

The team tested the vaccine on 21 free-ranging koalas in Queensland’s Moreton Bay region. Six had early-stage chlamydia and the other 15 were chlamydia-free.

After six months none of the chlamydia-free koalas had become infected, even though half the koalas in their habitat were carrying the disease. In addition, all six of the individuals that started out with chlamydia had cleared the infection.

The article has additional info, here.