Rabies - Information and Prevention Tips

Rabies is an infectious viral disease, which spreads through saliva of an infected (i.e. rabid) animal to other animals or humans. The possible means of transmission of rabies are animal bites or exposure of an open cut to the medium that contains virus of rabies. In case of infection, it is highly important to treat the infected person, and negligence in such case causes a painful death.

As discussed above, animal bite is single most prominent reason of spread of rabies in humans (via their pets or wild carnivores). Rabid cats, dogs, raccoons, bats, foxes, skunks, weasels, groundhogs, cattle etc. are among those animals which provides greatest risk of spreading rabies to humans. There are also some other wild carnivores, which work as a medium in transmission of rabies from one animal to other (for example: mongoose, squirrels, rabbits etc.). As awareness of the disease has spread all over the world, it is evident that the cases of spread of the disease through pets have become almost rare as compared to the spread of the disease through wild animal bites.

What Rabies Can Cause?
Virus of rabies attacks the central nervous system in the infected animal or humans and causes a condition called encephalopathy. Some of early symptoms of the disease include problems related to the nervous systems, fever, general malaise and sometimes the patient experiences strong headache. As the disease progresses, problems related to nervous system goes on increasing and also become more and more visible, the patient experiences anxiety, excitation, insomnia as a side effect of the disease, agitation, conditions like confusion and hallucinations, difficult in swallowing, salivation, muscle pain, irritations, vomiting, the patient also sometimes develops phobias (hydrophobia being most common), partial or full paralysis etc. This situation ultimately leads to death within few days after the symptoms become more prominent.

In Case If You Are Bitten By Possibly Infected Animal?
If in case you are bitten by an animal (that you do not know is infected from rabies or not), all you need to do is to speak to your doctor as soon as possible and take help from local health department to find out information about the animal and possibility of your getting infected by rabies. You should also ask for preventive measures from your doctor. Cleanse the wound with water and apply disinfectant and get medical aid from your doctor.

How Rabies Can Be Prevented?
Rabies can be cured by treatment after getting infected but it can cost much more in treatment of rabies than what it costs in preventing it. You can prevent spread of rabies in your pets by vaccinating your pets against rabies (which you can easily get done from any public/private clinic or local health department). If you find that your pet is carrying scratches, bites or scars, the possible source of which you do not know, then you probably need to be more careful and take your pet to a local health department to get checked for rabies. Take care of health of your pets and also check out for all possible symptoms of rabies. If in case your pet bites any person, you need to take necessary steps such as proper vaccination for the person who is been bitten by your pet.

Besides this, stray animals also need to be taken care of from the possible infection of rabies (as your pets can come in contact with stray animals). If there are stray animals in your area, you just need to inform your local health department regarding this. Take care not to handle aggressive wild animals or those, which look sick.

Vaccines for humans are also available to prevent possible infection of rabies. In case if you are one who is at greater risk of getting bite from an infected animal, its better for you to get vaccinated first.

Remember, prevention is better than cure!