June 17, 2010: According to Dr. Chamith Nanayakkara, people not obtaining proper treatment for rabies has become a serious problem. While 55 rabies victims were reported last year, during the first six months of this year alone, 23 had died due to the dreaded disease.
“Rabies is contracted primarily after being bitten by either dogs or cats. The vaccines to treat rabies after being bitten by these animals are available at all hospitals in the country. But if you look at last year, 55 deaths were reported owing to rabies. So far this year, another 23 deaths have occurred,” said Dr. Nanayakkara.
“The main reason for this is that people don’t know that they must obtain treatment after being bitten by a dog.
“If you look at last year’s figures, around 40 of the 55 deaths had occurred because of not obtaining the necessary treatment.
The other 15 dearths had occurred because they had gone to obtain treatment only once when in actual fact, you need to continuously obtain treatment over a period of time.
“The message that I can give to the public is that they should vaccinate their pets and obtain a certificate that they are safe.
Secondly, if you are bitten by a dog unknown to you or it has not been vaccinated, you must visit the closest hospital immediately and obtain treatment. Through that we can control the number of rabies deaths in the country,” said Dr. Nanayakkara.
May 20th, 2012
9 Comments at "Negligence, Major cause of Rabies deaths -Dr. Chamith Nanayakkara"
why can’t government take responsibility to educate people about this killing disease. I did’t see any programs about rabies in mass medias. rabies not spread through invisible viruses or small creatures like mosquitos. its mainly because of dog or cat bites. i think we can easily eradicate rabies, by proper dog population control method, vaccinate animals and educate people. but sadly as usual we don’t have proper planning.
It is really sad to know, more than 50 people died due to rabies. It is better to start awareness programs from school level.
we can”t blame to health ministry for every thing. our citizens also should be responsible for eradicate rabies. who let the puppies to the road ?????
negligence of the people is one of the main problem to solve lot of important issues. we have to change the method of education from schools. need to totally change the way of thinking. dengue, pollution of the nature every thing because of negligence.
Better to educate people about the Rabies in mass medias. but I’ll see only dog population control method
(sterilization) & vaccination in grassroot levels.
Kurunegala district rabies unit officials said that last ten years time only 38 deaths from dengue. but 76 deaths because of rabies. Rabies so critical. but i can’t understand why government not organize large scale awareness programs for educate people about rabies like they are doing to prevent dengue.
with out national policies we cant develop our country. we have enough human resources as well as assets, only need to stratergic plans and good management of work.
50 human deaths its really sad news
Need to do some thing immediately
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