Two Malaysian children have died after contracting rabies, the country’s first such deaths in almost two decades, as authorities battle a rare outbreak of the disease, officials said yesterday.
A six-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother died on Tuesday after becoming infected with the disease in a rural area on the Malaysian part of Borneo Island.
They were among three people confirmed to have been infected with rabies, which in most cases is transmitted via dog bites, Sarawak State Government and Sarawak Minister of Housing Sim Kui Hian (沈桂賢) said.
“Two of the three confirmed cases ... were pronounced dead,” Sim said.
“They were diagnosed to be brain dead and the parents have agreed for the life support to be withdrawn,” he said.
The other patient was still “critically ill,” he said.
Malaysian Director General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah told reporters that the cases were the first rabies-related deaths in the nation in almost 20 years.
Five villages in the Serian District of Sarawak, which borders the Indonesian part of Borneo, are confirmed as having been affected by the outbreak.
The island of Borneo is shared between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.
Sim said health teams in Serian had visited 19 villages as of Tuesday and carried out checks on more than 6,000 people.
Only three cases of humans contracting rabies had been confirmed.
Officials have ordered all dogs in the area to be vaccinated against rabies, state news agency Bernama reported.
Rabies causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord and is almost always fatal once it has been contracted, according to the WHO.
It mainly affects poor people and vulnerable populations in rural areas, according to the WHO.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS