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CAMBODIA: Rural poor most at risk from rabies
KAMPOT, 1 April 2011 (IRIN) - Yinn Siet, 65, recalls in horror when a snarling dog bit her husband four years ago. Before he died, the farmer hallucinated and convulsed. ?He barked like a dog,? she said. ?We put a chain on him and locked him up.?
He had contracted rabies, a virus that kills nearly all victims who develop symptoms.
Yinn could not afford to bring her husband to the capital Phnom Penh, the only city in Cambodia that has a centre offering free treatment.
Even if she had, it would have been too late.
He left behind his family of seven, who are struggling to make ends meet through farming.
Cambodians in the countryside have little access to treatment for rabies, a preventable disease that disproportionately affects the rural young and poor.
If dog-bite victims do not seek immediate treatment, they are likely to die. The virus is untreatable after symptoms appear, which can be anything from 10 days to a year after being bitten.
?The loss of a family member to rabies has a profound psychological impact on the family,? said Deborah Briggs, head of the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, a US-based NGO. ?The disease is frightening and it is devastating to watch a loved one die.? In 2007, the most recent year data are available, 810 human rabies deaths may have occurred in Cambodia, says a study in Neglected Tropical Diseases, a science journal.
The number is only an estimate. Hundreds of cases in the countryside go unreported, because patients are rarely hospitalized and tend to die at home.
The estimated rabies mortality for 2007 exceeded that of malaria (240 deaths) and dengue fever (400 deaths), the study said.
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http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92334
Photo: Contributor/IRIN
Hundreds of people die of rabies in rural Cambodia
KAMPOT, 1 April 2011 (IRIN) - Yinn Siet, 65, recalls in horror when a snarling dog bit her husband four years ago. Before he died, the farmer hallucinated and convulsed. ?He barked like a dog,? she said. ?We put a chain on him and locked him up.?
He had contracted rabies, a virus that kills nearly all victims who develop symptoms.
Yinn could not afford to bring her husband to the capital Phnom Penh, the only city in Cambodia that has a centre offering free treatment.
Even if she had, it would have been too late.
He left behind his family of seven, who are struggling to make ends meet through farming.
Cambodians in the countryside have little access to treatment for rabies, a preventable disease that disproportionately affects the rural young and poor.
If dog-bite victims do not seek immediate treatment, they are likely to die. The virus is untreatable after symptoms appear, which can be anything from 10 days to a year after being bitten.
?The loss of a family member to rabies has a profound psychological impact on the family,? said Deborah Briggs, head of the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, a US-based NGO. ?The disease is frightening and it is devastating to watch a loved one die.? In 2007, the most recent year data are available, 810 human rabies deaths may have occurred in Cambodia, says a study in Neglected Tropical Diseases, a science journal.
The number is only an estimate. Hundreds of cases in the countryside go unreported, because patients are rarely hospitalized and tend to die at home.
The estimated rabies mortality for 2007 exceeded that of malaria (240 deaths) and dengue fever (400 deaths), the study said.
Continue reading...
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92334