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Rabies Alert

© Jacqueline Dell

Not many diseases known to man are thought to be one hundred percent killers once the person has been diagnosed. Rabies however, is one such disease where this is exactly the case. If a person is infected with the rabies virus via an animal bite or scratch, and is left untreated, then the disease is totally fatal, and will most likely kill a person within seven to ten days. Pretty quick isn't it?

Thankfully in Australia, where I live, we are free of the Rabies disease and therefore we do not tend to worry about it too much. In other countries, such as America the Rabies virus is well and truly alive, and in many places the numbers of cases has been seen to be increasing steadily. Bobcats, dogs, cats, bats, raccoons, and even animals like beavers have been found to have rabies. Evidently the signs of a rabid animal are very clear. Things to look out for are strange behaviour, foaming at the mouth and animals that are continually attacking people or other animals. There is a problem with all of this information. The problem is that usually an attack by a rabid animal happens so quickly that the victim does not have a chance to view any of these symptoms either before or after the attack. The best bit of advice here is that if you live in a country where rabies is a problem, then you should go to a doctor immediately if you are ever bitten by any animal. Whether the animal is found to have rabies or not, a course of shots can be started in the meantime to ensure that the disease can be fought by the victim, and consequently death does not occur. It is better to be safe than sorry.

There are some amazing stories of rabid animal attacks, and of course we all know the dramatized one of the Stephen King book, "Cujo". However, contrary to popular belief it is very rare that dog and cat attacks actually result in the rabies virus being identified. You are much more likely to contract rabies from bats, or even more so from raccoons who contributed to more than eighty five percent of the known cases of rabies in New York in 1993. Moving into more recent times, there were approximately 7,000 cases of rabies in animals in 1999 and no cases reported in humans, but in 2000 there were five human deaths resulting from the rabies infection.

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