SOME people find sweet solace and genuine happiness by loving and taking care of some domestic animals as their affable pets. Hence, these pets like dogs and cats lived to their brand as the so-called man’s best friends, but on the other hand, can also be the man’s greatest enemies.
The ground is that dogs and cats are wholly capable of spreading rabies virus. In the Philippines, rabies is clearly echoing as a largely significant public health problem that calls to be addressed. Thus, “The country is one of the top 10 countries with rabies problem”, stated the World Health Organization (WHO).
Moreover, the infectivity is accountable for 55,000 deaths globally every year and the preponderance of these fatalities are children. The WHO says, “At least 1/3 of deaths due to human rabies are among children below 15 years old”. And with above 1,100 Filipinos who are in quest for emergency treatment methods for animal bites daily and as the Department of Health (DOH) reports 226 fatalities out of the total of more than 400,000 rabies cases last year, this grim infection is utterly pressing.
“Rabies kills 300 to 400 Filipinos every year, with dog bites accounting for 84 percent of human rabies cases”, wrote Sheila Crisostomo on her article published on the Philippine Star. Additionally, the DOH supported this claim as it reports 88 percent of rabies figures are acquired from pet dogs and about two percent from cats. Crisostomo added, “The number of animal bites was observed to be rising for the past 10 years, with 522, 420 in 2013 and 266, 210 in 2010”.
Unsurprisingly, dogs are chiefly the primary source of rabies transmission while animals like cats and several livestock animals can also transmit the virus. Jocelyn Uy said on her article posted on the Philippine Daily Inquirer, “But unknown to many, a bit bulk of rabies infection is acquired from pet dogs rather than the stray ones”.
“Rabies is a deadly viral disease that is mainly spread by bite but exposure may also occur through contamination of broken skin or mucous membrane with saliva of an infected animal”, Uy added. Furthermore, Dr. Raffy Deray mentioned that it is caused by a virus that infects the central nervous system and the affected patient may succumb to death within three to five days.
Deray is a program manager for rabies at the Department of Health’s National Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
“The lips are the mucous membrane and that the virus could enter the body when an infected animal licks the area. Even if your lips have no cuts, if an infected saliva has contact with the lips, you can get rabies”, says Deray. Thus, the DOH discourages pet owners from kissing their pets as it can cause the terrible infection.
Likewise, the incubation period can be as short as a few days but it can also last as long as five years. Phillip Chua, a reporter from the Philippine Daily Inquirer wrote in his article “the incubation period or the time for the infection to develop varies from 10 days to a year, with the average of 30 to 50 days”.
However, approximately 95 percent of people who have been affected by rabid animals build up the disease within a year. The DOH informed that from the time the patients show signs and symptoms, there is no treatment procedures and the patient frequently yield to the contagion within 10 days.
Meanwhile, Deray also uttered, “some signs that you have rabies are anxiety, stress and tension, delirium, drooling, convulsions, exaggerated sensation at the bite site, hallucinations, loss of feeling in an area of the body, loss of muscle function, low-grade fever, muscle spasms, numbness and tingling, pain at the side of the bite, restlessness, insomnia, and swallowing difficulty”.
Besides, rabies is perhaps preventable, but the word “rabies” itself evokes fear and dread among people as it can still be totally lethal or deadly. To support this, the DOH said “Rabies is a considered a neglected disease that is ‘100 percent’ fatal but also highly preventable”.
Yet, it can’t be cured but an unparalleled approach in preventing the virus is immunization for the patients and for the animals also. Deray added, “The latest recommendation of the DOH is all bite victims should be provided immunization as early as possible”. Conversely, “But it was estimated that of the nine million dogs across the country only one million are only vaccinated against rabies”, Crisostomo wrote.
As a result, Charles Buban of the Philippine Daily Inquirer wrote “Deray explained that dog vaccination is more achievable means of addressing deaths caused by the rabies infection. He added that getting rabies shots even before you get bitten is a precious health investment”.
Since rabies is currently full-blown in the country, the DOH is targeting a rabies-free Philippines by 2020 through the vaccination of all dogs in the entire nation.