H
ow can you prevent the spread of infectious disease from your pet? Correct care of your pet may prevent the spread of infection or illness to household members. To prevent the spread of disease from your pet, be careful to: • Keep your pet’s vaccines up-to-date. • See a veterinarian regularly with your pet for health checkups. • Keep your pet’s bedding and living area clean. • Feed your pet a balanced diet. Don’t give your pet raw foods or allow it to drink out of the toilet. • Clean cat litter boxes every day. Pregnant women should not touch cat litter. It may contain infectious diseases that cause birth defects, including toxoplasmosis. • Wash your hands thoroughly after touching animals or cleaning up animal waste. Your children should do the same. • Washing hands is especially important after handling reptiles. These animals may harbor a bacteria called salmonella. Salmonella can cause salmonellosis. This disease lead to diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. Most people who contract salmonella will have symptoms that last from 4 to 7 days and will get better without treatment.
58 4 Legs & a Tail
Pets and Infectious Diseases in Children
In North America, rabies happens primarily in skunks, raccoons, foxes, and bats. In some areas, these wild animals infect domestic cats, dogs, and livestock. In the U.S., cats are more likely than dogs to be rabid. Generally, rabies is rare in small rodents, such as beavers, chipmunks, squirrels, rats, mice, or hamsters. Rabies is also rare in rabbits. In the midPeg Bolgioni Atlantic states, where rabies is increasing in raccoons, woodchucks (also known as What is the relationship between wild animals and infectious diseases? groundhogs) can also be rabid. Wild animals and insects can be carriers for some very serious diseases. These include rabies, tetanus, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, hantavirus, and the plague. Animal bites and scratches, even when they are minor, may become infected and spread bacteria to other parts of the body. Whether the bite is from a family pet or an animal in the wild, scratches and bites may carry disease. Cat scratches, for example, even from a kitten, may carry “cat scratch disease.” It’s a type of bacterial infection. Bites and/or scratches that break the skin are even more likely to become infected. How does rabies happen? What immediate care is needed for The rabies virus is most often passed animal bites? on through the bite of a rabid animal. It • Wash the wound with soap and water travels to the central nervous system. Once under pressure from a faucet. Don’t the infection is established in the brain, scrub. It can bruise the tissue. the virus travels down the nerves from the • If the bite or scratch is bleeding, put brain and multiplies in different organs. The salivary glands are most important pressure on it with a clean bandage or in the spread of rabies from one animal towel to stop the bleeding. • Dry the wound and cover it with a ster- to another. When an infected animal ile dressing. Don’t use tape or butterfly bites another animal, the rabies virus is bandages. They can trap harmful bac- transmitted through the infected animal’s saliva. Scratches by claws of rabid animals teria in the wound. • Call your child’s healthcare provider are also dangerous because these animals for guidance in reporting the attack. lick their claws. Your child’s healthcare provider will What are the symptoms of rabies? The incubation period in humans from decide whether more treatment, such as antibiotics, a tetanus booster, or rabies the time of exposure to the start of illness vaccine, is needed. This call needs to can range anywhere from 5 days to more be made even if it looks like a minor than a year. But the average incubation injury, and even if the animal involved period is about 2 months. Each person may have different symptoms. Initially, is your pet or a neighbor’s pet. • If possible, find the animal that inflict- there are no symptoms. When symptoms ed the wound. Some animals need to do develop, they may include: • Pain, numbness, and tingling around be captured, confined, and watched for the wound site rabies. Don’t try to capture the animal • Low-grade fever yourself. Instead, call the nearest animal warden or animal control office • Headache in your area. • Appetite loss • If the animal can’t be found, if the ani• Intense thirst, but drinking will cause mal was a high-risk species (such as painful throat spasms a skunk or bat), or the animal attack • Restlessness was unprovoked, the victim may need • Hyperactivity a series of rabies shots. • Disorientation, confusion, and anxiety What is rabies? • Seizures Rabies is a widespread, viral infection of warm-blooded animals. It is caused by a These symptoms may look like othvirus in the Rhabdoviridae family. It attacks er health conditions. Always talk with the nervous system. ONCE SYMPTOMS your child’s healthcare provider for DEVELOP, IT IS 100% FATAL in animals. a diagnosis. Fall 2020
