The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advised people planning to visit Indonesia’s most popular island for tourists, Bali, to keep a safe distance from wild animals amid a surge in the number of people who have died of rabies in the area this year.
CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said that 12 people have been killed by rabies in Bali thus far this year, four times the total of three deaths reported in the previous two years.
“From January to June, more than 17,000 individuals suffered dog bite injuries in Bali, the highest among other regions in the country,” Chuang said.
WHO statistics show that between 55,000 and 60,000 people succumb to rabies each year worldwide, which is equivalent to one death every 10 minutes, Chuang said.
The disease is also rampant in China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and some African countries, he added.
The centers said rabies is a disease caused by the rabies virus that can lead to acute inflammation of the brain in humans after being bitten by rabid animals, such as cats, dogs, monkeys and bats. With a fatality rate of nearly 100 percent, the disease has an incubation period of one to three months.
“Early-stage symptoms include feeling hot and cold, a sore throat, loss of appetite, vomiting, difficulty breathing, coughing, headache and an itching sensation at the site of the bite,” the centers said.
A few days after being infected, the sufferer experiences uncontrollable nervous excitement, fear of water and swallowing difficulty, followed by mental impairment, seizures and eventually death, it said.
Chuang said people who have been bitten by a wild animal are urged to immediately wash the wound with soap and running water for 15 minutes and sterilize it with povidone iodine or 70 percent alcohol/ethanol.
“It is also vital that they be administered a dose of human rabies immune globulin within 48 hours and be given five doses of rabies vaccine on days zero, three, seven, 14 and 28,” he said.
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