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“They were diagnosed to be brain dead and the parents have agreed for the life support to be withdrawn,” he said.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.
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