Reminder about Rabies

There is currently a woman hospitalised in the UK, due to a confirmed case of rabies.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-18192494

This is a reminder to new travellers and old, that if you get bitten by any animal, or even licked on an open sore, that you should immediately seek medical treatment.

Rabies is treatable if immediate diagnosis and drugs are given.

Unfortunately for this lady, the odds are against her, as few cases caught at her stage (roughly 0%) are treatable.


Mods - please feel free to move this post, but I couldn't seem to find an appropriate forum, ...

I have moved it to Health and Well-Being forum .

I'm sorry for the lady, and for her family.

What struck me about the news reports, though, was all this stuff about risk to the pubic, as if anybody would imagine that there was a risk. What a whinging, nervous, paranoid bunch us Brits have become .

From the article: "Although there are no cases of rabies being passed by human-to-human contact...."

It seems your right Nick-H.

The possible danger in treating a rabies sufferer has never occurred to me, and I have never seen it mentioned either. There are medical reasons for putting fingers in mouths, and saliva could get about anyway. I'm not poo-pooing that --- but I'm still horrified at the sense of damage-limitation PR going on

You've been living here for too long In India rabies is unfortunately a relatively common occurrence but don't forget that it's a horrible disease with 100% mortality (not entirely true, I think there's been 1 documented survival case after clinical symptoms manifested) and took decades to -more or less- totally eradicate it in the human population in Europe. Not all people know about the low transmission risk.

How would you react if an ebola case were to erupt close to where you live? That one also only spreads through close personal contact.

The media will leap on anything for a headline and it loves to beat up a good scare.
As for Ebola virus, well you are talking chalk and cheese there.

Check your facts about infectiousness, transmission modes and the causes that promote the spreading of the ebolavirus....close personal contact with patients' secretions and (the main one in Africa) the sharing of non-sterilized needles in a medical setting. Ebola might be (a lot) more risky in aerosol form (not enough conclusive data) but that's balanced by an average fatality rate (all types confounded) of about 68% for ebola versus 100% for rabies. Ebola is biosafety level 4, rabies virus (wild) is 3, the reason for the distinction being that there exists no commercially available vaccine for ebola.

Each to their own, dillichaat.
Given the choice I would rather take my chances in a rabies risk area than a likely Ebola area.
And that's my fact.

dillichaat, it is very unlikely that anyone in this poor woman's circle, or any of her her carers would have been bitten by her. It's like HIV: not actually that easy to to catch.

It is not that I've lived outside of UK for too long: it is that I have been British for too long! All these things are governed by PR consultants and damage-limitation insurance companies.

A man was admitted to hospital today with a broken leg. A hospital spokesman stated that the situation was under control and that there was no risk to members of the public.

Blah.

I think the British case was reported as such because it's a rarity that we get any rabies cases and, as a result, there's a lot of misinformation. Very sadly, the individual concerned died.

Indeed, in the West it is very misunderstood: many people think the vaccine prevents it entirely, for instance.

Always better to be safe rather than sorry, I've always taken this approach to healthcare, especially when travelling: although as mentioned upthread rabies is *fairly* difficult to get, its worth having an appreciation of the risks involved in high-risk countries and work out what your response should be. Me? I've had the vaccine, but I know many, many people don't (and they're fine) but its a matter of personal preference.

There is no vaccine.

There IS a highly effective rabies vaccine but the routine prophylaxis shots for rabies just shorten the final treatment (reduce the number of additional shots one needs to get).

A pre-exposure prophylaxis means you can forgo the need for RIG (rabies immune globulin ) treatment, something not readily available in parts of India..

That is the most important part of pre vaccination.

Not a vaccine that prevents you from developing the disease, true. But as stated in my previous post, a vaccine does exist. It does not stop you requiring prompt treatment, but you do not require post-exposure immuno globulin. As others have said, this can be hard to come by in some parts of the world.

This was inevitable. The best they would have been able to do would be to make her departure as comfortable as possible.

Anyway, yes its sad. It seems that she was turned away from hospital casualty departments. The reports seem to imply that she did not state that she had been bitten by a dog in a country with rabies. Either she did not, or the British National Health Service would like to believe that she did not. If she did not, then a British doctor can hardly be blamed for not looking for a disease that has been eradicated in UK. Anyway, by the time symptoms develop, it is too late.

It has also been known for people to die of malaria in UK, again, not a disease most doctors would see very often, although there was a high-profile case where the victim was of Indian origin, so perhaps it wasn't such a stretch.

Anyway, it is very important, when sick after travel, to make sure the doctor knows where you have been and takes it seriously.