KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews/12 May) – Residents here have been warned to be extra cautious in dealing with dog bites following the death last week of a resident in Barangay Balindog due to rabies.
Rubber tapper Samson Dayanan, 49, was bitten by one of their puppies sometime in March, his wife Malou said.
Malou said the puppy died the next day but her husband just shrugged his shoulders when told the dog might be rabid and that it might kill him.
Last week, Malou said her husband experienced fever and numbness. Later, her husband had hallucinations and became hydrophobic.
When reports about Dayanan’s death reached the City Health Office and City Veterinarian Office, they immediately went to the victim’s place and gave the family doses of anti-rabies vaccine.
The two offices are still verifying reports that another resident died of rabies.
Doctors at the hospital where Dayanan was brought for treatment and where he died, told the public to be extra cautious of dog bites as the animal might be a carrier of rabies virus.
The freedictionay.com defines rabies as an “acute viral disease of the central nervous system that affects humans and other mammals but is most common in carnivores (flesh-eaters).”
The disease can communicated to humans and is “almost exclusively transmitted through saliva from the bite of an infected animal.”
The disease is also known as hydrophobia, which literally means “fear of water,” a symptom that is reportedly shared by half of all people infected with rabies.
“Other symptoms include fever, depression, confusion, painful muscle spasms, sensitivity to touch, loud noise, and light, extreme thirst, painful swallowing, excessive salivation, and loss of muscle tone. If rabies is not prevented by immunization, it is almost always fatal,” it said. (Malu Manar/MindaNews)