Yes, that’s an "oops," but it’s also not completely preventable.
A stray dog and her 6 puppies were sent to a foster home recently by a South Boston, VA animal shelter. It’s a common and logical thing to do, to get the puppies into a lower risk environment until they are old enough to be
ProMed Mail‘s monthly US rabies update often contains some interesting cases, and the last one is no exception.
A llama in Georgia became aggressive, started biting itself and was spitting at one of its caretakers. A spitting llama certainly doesn’t mean rabies (I have dodged enough llama spitballs to know that) but any sudden
Israel’s Health Ministry is recommending rabies vaccination for people traveling to India.This seems to be mainly in response to the recent high-profile case of an English woman who died of rabies acquired from a dog in India. While it was high-profile, that certainly wasn’t the only travel-associated rabies infection in the past year.
ProMed’s latest accumulation of rabies reports has the typical mix of domestic animal and wildlife rabies cases, and some recurring themes.
Fox / dog / human, North Carolina
In this case, a rabid fox had a "direct encounter" with several people, then it was killed by a dog. Three people have started post-exposure treatment.
The executive director of the SPCA of Niagara is under pressure from charges that he’s "presided over the killing of hundreds of animals." As is common with shelter controversies, sorting through the emotion and rhetoric is difficult. At best, running a shelter can be a thankless task, due to the overwhelming number of animals
The Toronto Star has an article describing the efforts of Naz Sayani to bring home a group of street dogs from India. As an animal lover, she was touched by the number of stray dogs roaming around New Delhi while accompanying her daughter to India for medical treatment. She borrowed a car and started
Miami Beach officials, disturbed by reports of a hookworm outbreak, have taken a rather unique approach to the problem: they’ve created a cat and cat poop map.
This fall, several cases of cutaneous larval migrans were reported – and highly publicized – in the Miami Beach area, something that is of particular concern for
A Royal Oak, Michigan resident is undergoing rabies post-exposure prophylaxis after being bitten by a rabid cat. The person found a sick cat by the side of the road and took it to a vet clinic… a good deed in theory, but problematic in many ways. One obvious risk is the potential for rabies
Humane societies and shelters are often overwhelmed by the number of animals that come in. It’s pretty uncommon to see much (if any) empty space in most shelters, and overcapacity shelters lead to increased risk of disease transmission, outbreaks and suboptimal care of the animals that are there.
One way of helping deal with overcrowding
ProMed’s monthly rabies update contains some recurring themes:
A couple of incidents of dog versus rabid raccoon. The dog usually comes out on top, but the raccoon can exact revenge at the end of the day through the need for quarantine or euthanasia. If the dog is not vaccinated, a long quarantine or euthanasia is
