Staying healthy: vaccinate your dogs!

Writer: Dr Hilldidge Beer.

For too long, pet owners living in cities and the suburbs have believed that rabies is no threat to their animals; that it’s a disease carried by farm animals and wildlife and therefore won’t infect their pets. Not true.

Rabies is endemic in South Africa and has been identified in rural and in urban areas. In fact, 99% of rabies cases come from dog bites, with children being at greatest risk. Once clinical symptoms appear, rabies is virtually 100% fatal.

Rabies is present on all continents, except Antarctica, with over 95% of human deaths occurring in the Asia and Africa regions. People are usually infected following a deep bite or scratch from a dog with rabies (99% of the time). Human deaths following exposure to foxes, raccoons, skunks, jackals, mongooses and other wild carnivore host species are very rare, and bites from rodents are not known to transmit rabies.

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 17)