BY EUGENE Y.ADIONG
CADIZ City – The provincial veterinarian of Negros Occidental has ordered the city veterinarian here to eliminate all stray dogs, after a random testing showed that two of six stray dogs in the city were rabid.
Provincial Veterinarian Renante Decena said there must be an “immediate depopulation of dogs.”
The city government’s veterinarian is Dr. Josue Rabang.
“Eliminate stray dogs,” Decena ordered Rabang.
Under the law, when the situation “endangers the life and limbs of the people, rabid dogs should be eliminated,” Decena explained.
As of Friday, records of the Provincial Veterinary Office (PVO) showed 11 dogs tested for rabies.
Last month, the PVO declared a rabies outbreak in two towns and three cities in Negros Occidental.
They were Pulupundan and Binalbagan and the cities of Bacolod, Cadiz and San Carlos.
Decena appealed to dog owners to be responsible for their pets. They must have their dogs vaccinated and leash them all the time.
In Negros Occidental, only 24,000 of the 219,000 dog population were vaccinated.
Rabies remains a public health concern throughout the country, according to the Department of Health.
Rabies has always inspired a special terror since it was first described 3,800 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia.
It attacks the nervous system. Its victims exhibit irrational furies, fearfulness and foaming at the mouth.
The difficulty that patients have in swallowing water or food led to the disease’s other common name: hydrophobia.
Since the virus moves through the body inside nerve tissue rather than the blood, the disease triggers no antibodies and can’t be detected during its incubation. Once it reaches the brain, death is virtually inevitable.
The rabies vaccination, first developed by Louis Pasteur in 1885, used to be an extremely painful series of 14 to 21 shots in the abdomen. In recent years, a much gentler but equally effective set of five shots in the arm has become available./PN
