Nearly 59,000 people die of rabies every year worldwide, a third of them in India.
According to a item of the New York Times, rabies – transmitted to humans by dog bites in 99% of cases – kills nearly 59,000 people a year worldwide, mainly in Asia and Africa.
40% of rabies victims are children, according to the World Health Organization, which recently announced a campaign to reduce human deaths from canine rabies to zero by 2030.
India is the main victim with nearly 20,000 deaths per year, or nearly a third of the global count.
One of the deadliest diseases
According to the New York Times, “rabies is the deadliest disease known.” The rabies virus enters the human body through a dog bite and then travels to the brain.
In humans, after two weeks in the brain, the virus causes excessive salivation, convulsions, poor coordination of movements and heightened sensitivity to light and sound.
When these symptoms appear, the disease is potentially fatal. But death can be avoided even when a person is already carrying the virus, thanks in particular to a series of bites.
According to the WHO, fifteen people have already survived rabies disease after the onset of symptoms. Several of them, however, have retained neurological sequelae.
Mission Rabies
The New York Times article focuses on an initiative carried out on the island of Goa, on the western side of India: Mission Rabies.
This NGO has already proven itself in Haiti and is now supported by the local government of the island. According to a rabies veterinarian interviewed by the New York Times reporter, Mission Rabies is one of the most effective initiatives in low- and middle-income countries he has seen in the past decade.
This efficiency is due in particular to dozens of men in yellow t-shirts who have been trained to run after the dogs on the island under 40 degrees in order to vaccinate them against rabies and thus stop the transmission of the virus.
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