World Rabies Day

World Rabies Day was on 28^th September but as usually happens I only found out about it afterwards. However, here are a couple of timely reports published thanks to the event.

The Huffington Post published advice for travellers to protect themselves against the disease, which is invariably fatal if not immediately treated after exposure, reminding us that around 50,000 people die annually from rabies worldwide. As they point out “the disease can be spread by something as simple as a lick on the hand from a friendly stray dog in Beijing”.

Secondly, here is an article about how rabies is edging its way towards the rabies-free continent of Australia. There is still a barrier of 350km of open ocean but over the past 10-15 years the disease has reached more and more Indonesian islands.

This article also discusses the necessary management tactics to deal with the disease through vaccination of both tame and wild populations of dogs, whereby at least 70% of the total number of animals needs to be vaccinated and this level of coverage must be maintained for several years. This is an extremely difficult task even on relatively small islands and would be virtually impossible if it ever got a hold in Australia. The article ends with the point that "Culling wild or stray dogs, which may seem logical, just doesn't work, and can actually do more harm than good." The unstated reason for this being that such culling produces relatively dog-free areas which encourages movement in the canine population as other dogs shift their territories and thereby the rabies virus itself becomes more mobile.

Learn more about the lives and issue of unowned dogs in my e-book ”A Stray View” available from Bangkok Books (readable as .pdf on any computer)