In addition to Bali’s lack of success in eliminating rabies from the island, provincial authorities in Bali are facing another problem: a thinning supply of the anti-rabies vaccine, reports Tribun Bali.
In the midst of this crisis, a 52 year-old mother from Desa Bongan, Tabanan, died of the rabies virus after undergoing a 12-hour intensive care treatment at Sanglah hospital, Denpasar.
The doctor in charge of the Rabies Prevention Team at Sanglah Hospital asserted that the mortality rate for anyone who has contracted the rabies virus is 100%. It’s very important that citizens are extremely careful and understand the danger of the rabies virus, he continued.
Common causes of rabies in Bali generally occur from dog bites, although monkeys may also pose risks. If a human suffers a bite from stray dogs or wild monkeys with the rabies virus, the anti-rabies vaccines must be injected immediately (ideally within 24 hours) and then in a series of subsequent doses within a particular period, to stop the virus from spreading to the rest of the body.
Provincial Authorities claim that they understand the risks that scarcity of the anti-rabies vaccines pose and are taking appropriate actions to ensure that hospitals and clinics will soon have adequate stock to meet the demands.
We sure hope so. Until then the only thing we can do is be extra careful and keep our distances from wild dogs and monkeys.
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