In a few minutes of reading James Gorman's excellent article accompanied by Atul Loak's superb pictures I learned everything i really needed to know about Rabies. We can deal with it and much of the world already has. I suspect we could deal with a lot of the worlds other frightening problems that we see if we took the same approach. Good for Nytimes covering this sort of stuff.
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The people involved in this effort are kind hearted and courageous souls. Compassion towards any form of life, human or animals, demonstrates deep empathy, which is perhaps one of the greatest qualities in man.
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An article for those interested in the 4000-year history of rabies:
https://www.mdpi.com/2414-6366/2/2/5
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Why don't the humans take the shot?
I believe Westerners who travel to places like India may get vaccinated. But the article points out that there are many more people than dogs in India, also rabies is endemic in dogs but not in people. People who contract rabies don’t go around biting other people and infecting them, but rabid dogs do attack both people and other dogs.
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@Don Juan
I've had the rabies shot after a bite. It was a beautiful color of purple, and tested (I read the enclosed paperwork) in Iran.
It's not injected into the stomach any more but into the area around the wound, and into the large muscle of the gluteus.
I'm protected against everything except rabid monkeys in Thailand.
The only problem with the rabies shot was that I had to go to the eR for all of my shots for some reason, and it was $300 a visit in90's dollars,
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I just received post-exposure immunization and it cost about $30,000.
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Canine vaccination protects humans from rabies. It also reduces their risk of being bitten, whether or not rabies is transmitted. And of course it protects the dogs (and cats) themselves from rabies. We don't know why, but it seems that vaccinating dogs against rabies also reduces their all-cause mortality (Vaccine 2017; 35: 3844–9). All for the cost of a large-size beer in most countries.
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Vaccination makes sense to me. But, where are the comments from the anti-vaccine crowd?
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Any and all suffering of animals is directly related to humans' cruelty, neglect, insensitivity, and avoidance of any problem solving behaviors. Especially the south and foreign lands.
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@nancydrew
"Any and all" ? Really?
There is of course suffering in animals due to neglect and cruelty. But I've been out a little bit and the life of animals in the wild doesn't seem to me like a party, either.
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So, for control of canine rabies the state of Goa depends upon a program run by an international non-profit. Yet the Indian government is spending massive sums on its Mission to the Moon program. And this is in a country in which, by even conservative estimates, over 300 million people lack access to toilets. One could well argue that fiscal priorities in the US are misaligned, but India is something else altogether.
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@Greg Colbert This is short-sighted. Developing and launching scientific missions creates many jobs and the money spent develops the economy. While war and defense are unfortunately often the major Keynesian drivers of economic growth, space missions also contribute and are much more benign. The 25 billion dollars spent on the moon landing created 400,000 jobs and did a lot more good for advancing human knowledge than the 168 billion spent on the Vietnam war.
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@Anonymouse
I don't deny the US space program created jobs and helped incubate new technologies. But let's be real, the space program was first and foremost about enhancing national prestige (i.e., beating the Soviets). Advancing scientific frontiers was at best a secondary consideration. It's the same with India. I guess there's no glamor in providing people toilets.
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@Greg Colbert
It's always easy to look over your fence and make casual remarks and comments, like Greg Colbert.
India has lots of poor people but that doesn't require putting all else on the back burner, while prioritizing only the needs of the poor masses. If the country has the human capital to send a man to the moon, let them. Why should it bother a Bostonian.
Gregg Colbert, I assume, probably cannot point India out on a map, and should perhaps be honest with himself and reflect upon the opiod crisis, rampant clerical pedophilia, enshrined racial inequities, illegal immigration in his backyard.
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The feral dog population in India has skyrocketed in part due to the continuing use of diclofenac Now, instead of vultures cleaning up bovine carcasses, dogs have taken over that role, and their pack behavior has created multiple new problems. The effects are far-reaching. Not only are people at more risk from rabies, but people who grow up afraid of feral dogs move to countries where dogs are pets and family members, and the adjustment can be very difficult. I try to be very understanding when I have a foster dog with me and I see someone who is clearly scared of the dog, but many dog owners in the States ridicule these people and tell them to “get over it”. It’s not easy to lose that lifelong fear. If you are scared of snakes, imagine someone telling you to "get over it".
Really, population control is the only long-term option, along with the restoration of the vulture population. As long as the dogs have ready food sources in dead oxen, they will continue to populate the streets, and rabies will continue to be a problem, despite these excellent programs aimed at reducing rabies.
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Seems like some cheap and disposable version of the air-gun dart used to tranquilize animals should be adapted for this purpose.
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@JimBob
Only for some dogs. Most can be caught and, importantly, tagged.
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All dogs need to be vaccinated and spayed! Here in the US there are still too many kill shelters. I have adopted 33 dogs in my adult lifetime. If I had more money, I would adopt more,but I’m 78, and I have six dogs. I look at pictures of starving, stray dogs in countries like India and they make me weep. I ca t even imagine what it must be like to be a dog there, with a horrible disease, who will suffer and die alone. Kind of like how many people in those areas also live and die. Birth control, abortion should be universally available for people,too. What a sad world we live in!
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Mission Rabies and the Humane Society should band together and make sure all the dogs are spayed or neutered at the same time they're vaccinated. I've seen hundreds of stray dogs when I was in India and Greece and the lives they lead are difficult and dangerous.
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Thank you for this in depth look at the world rabies crisis. It’s a reminder that just because we live in a virtual rabies-free environment doesn’t mean we are immune when traveling to other countries where present. I will make a note of donating to anti-rabies/street dog programs in the future. Thank you, New York Times for another educating and enlightening article.
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As James Gorman notes in passing, dogs are not the only carrier of rabies. Other mammals, like bats, also carry the disease. In fact, 15 years ago, I was bitten by a rabid bat in a highly urban downtown area in Florida. Fortunately, I was aware that bats carry rabies, and I had the series of shots that prevented the disease from killing me. Sadly, not everyone is aware of the danger that bats pose, and as a result, people in the United States have died from rabies that they contracted from bats (and racoons).
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@Cheryl Absolutely. There are other rabies reservoirs. I believe in NY, human rabies cases are more closely associated with bat contact, like in your case. Thank goodness you knew to get medical attention right away. An American woman contracted rabies from a bite from an infected puppy while she was visiting India. She didn't seek medical attention until it was too late. The case was written up in the CDC's MMWR a few months ago. The NYSDOH uses rabies vaccines in edible bait to reach raccoons in the Adirondacks. The baits are thrown from a helicopter; I assisted with this one year as a student intern. Avoids contact with the animals, but is probably too expensive for most countries.
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You do not state in your article if vacunación is requieres yearly as I think. This would complicate the effort greatly. Or you requiere vaccination for life? Thank you
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@John Sudarsky Perhaps the article was modified since your comment. Clarification of efficacy up to roughly one year is now mentioned
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I had no idea rabies was still just a big problem. How easy it is to take one's environment for granted. We live in Mexico, now, and in the 11 years we have been here, I have never heard of anyone getting bitten by a rabid dog though there are plenty of street dogs. So I assume it is not a problem here, at least not near Central Mexico.
I love this idea. Rather than taking stray dogs to the shelter, give them a shot and let them go! It's cheaper and more humane, unless the dog is terribly ill, in which case euthanasia may be the kindest option.
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@ManuelaYou need to educate yourself (and others) about the pain and suffering of stray animals, of any location. "Let them go?" Let them go into a shorter lifespan, starvation, cruelty and other diseases? NO WAY. That is INHUMANE.
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Yeah and so would spaying and neutering the dogs to limit their numbers. Fewer wild dogs, fewer chances that rabies would be in the community. I know this won't happen because all one has to do is look at the southern United States where there are so many pups (and kitties) in the pound looking for families because people don't spay and neuter. The South is the supply center for rescue pets. Fortunately rabies isn't a problem here.
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@MomT Generally the South is absolutely terrible in regulating and enforcing spaying and neutering. The majority of US pet adoptions up North come from the South. My little Betty was born in Georgia.
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@Lisabuying from breeders is a big no no. Hope Betty was a rescue.
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@Lisa yes, that is what she is saying
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