Over 70pc Rabies vaccine not available: MoPH

KABUL (Pajhwok): Dog bite incidents have increased by 14 percent in the first six months of the ongoing solar year comparing to the same period of the last year, according to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH). This comes at a time when the MoPH is faced with 70 percent shortage of Postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) vaccine. The MoPH in a report said 15,906 dog bite incidents in the centre and provinces registered in the first six months of the ongoing solar year.
Most of these incidents had happened in capital Kabul, four victims of dog bit incidents had been lost.
This comes that last year during first six months around 12,000 incidents had registered. According to the officials in the past two years the incidents related to dog bite had increased nationwide while the vaccine provided for this purpose by the World Health Organisation (WHO) was not sufficient.
Dr. Fakhruddin Stanikzai, head of the Zoonosis Diseases section at the MoPH, said Rabies disease was one of the viral diseases and zoonosis that caused acute brain inflammation, this virus can cause disease in all warm-blooded animals, including humans. The virus enters a person’s body from the saliva of an animal suffering from this disease, through the bite site, goes to the muscles towards the central nerves and starts growing.
He said Initial symptoms of rabies include generic signs like fever, pain and unusual or unexplained tingling, pricking, or burning sensations at the wound site. As the virus moves to the central nervous system, progressive and fatal inflammation of the brain and spinal cord develops.
Finally the patient start fear from light, water and wind and within less than 10 days the person dies.
14 percent surge in dog bite incidents
According to the information of the MoPH in the first six months of ongoing year 15,906 dog bite incidents happened while last year 12,000 dog bite incidents happened during the same period last year. This year’s facts and figures included 2,337 children, 2980 women and the remaining men.
According to the MOPH, last year 33,089 dog bite incident registered nationwide, 18 victims of these incident had lost their lives. The World Health Organisation (WHO) report said that Rabies is a vaccine-preventable disease which existed in over 150 countries and caused the death of thousands of people mainly in Asia and Africa, 40 percent victims of this virus are children under the age of 15. According to Stanikzai, most numbers of dog bite incident recoreded in Kabul which are 5,207, in the second number is Herat province with 1,453 incidents, Nangarhar 960 while Logar and Jawzjan recorded the lest number of cases with 30 dog bite incidents each.