The ragekills more than 55,000 people worldwide each year, mainly in Africa and Asia. Vaccination is the most effective way to prevent this disease transmitted from animals to humans. Each year, more than 15 million people around the world are vaccinated after exposure to prevent the onset of rabies. But that is not enough. The lack of funds for preventive vaccination claims the lives of thousands of children each year, warns the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). This is annoying when we know that only a tenth of the amount allocated to patient care would enable all vulnerable populations (exposed to a case of rabies) to be vaccinated.
“Even when we demonstrate that the cost of vaccination represents 10% of the cost of caring for patients bitten by dogs around the world, we fail to convince all the donors” annoys Dr Bernard Vallat, CEO of the OIE during its annual congress in Paris. He compares the contrast between the lack of investment against rabies and that given to research against rabies. Coronavirus (MERS-CoV): “We have 70,000 children who die of rabies every year in terrible suffering and the media are indifferent to it”.
Another source of concern relayed by the OIE concerns the quality of the vaccines administered. Some products used on dogs and other animals are of poor quality and can make the condition worse by inoculating the disease in the animal.
The rabies virus is transmitted to humans through the saliva of animals (domestic or wild) infected with a bite or scratch. Vaccination, carried out within a few hours of contact with a suspect animal, helps prevent the onset of rabies and death.
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