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One Bite Could Be Deadly: The Truth About Rabies 🐕⚠️

What is Rabies?

Rabies is a deadly virus spread to people from the saliva of infected animals. The rabies virus is usually transmitted through a bite.

How Do You Get Rabies?

Rabies is most commonly found in bats, skunks, raccoons and foxes, but other animals — including your pet dog🦮 or cat — can become infected. If a break in your skin comes in contact with the spit of an infected animal, you could get rabies.

⚠️Risk Factors

1. Traveling or living in developing countries

2. ⁠Activities that are likely to put you in contact with wild animals that may have rabies, such as exploring caves where bats live or camping without taking precautions to keep wild animals away from your campsite

3. Working as a veterinarian

Working in a laboratory with the rabies virus

4. Wounds to the head or neck, which may help the rabies virus travel to your brain more quickly

What Happens When You Get Rabies?

Rabies virus gets into your body when the saliva (spit) of an infected animal gets into an open wound (usually from a bite). It moves very slowly along nerves into your central nervous system (your brain and spinal cord). When it reaches your brain, the damage causes neurological symptoms. From there, rabies leads to coma and death.

How Does Rabies Affect Your Body?

Rabies moves from an infected wound to your brain over time. There are several phases that most people go through: incubation, prodromal phase, acute neurologic phase and coma.

🔵Incubation:

Rabies virus can spend days to weeks in your body before it gets into your nervous system (incubation). You don’t have any symptoms during this time. If you receive treatment early in the incubation period, you won’t get rabies.

🔴Prodromal Phase:

Rabies virus travels through your nerve cells into your brain and spinal cord, causing nerve damage as it goes. The prodromal phase starts when the rabies virus has entered your nervous system. Your immune system tries to fight back, causing flu-like symptoms. Nerve damage might cause tingling, pain or numbness where you were bitten. This lasts two to 10 days. There aren’t any effective treatments when rabies reaches this phase.

🔴Acute Neurological Phase:

In this phase, the rabies virus starts damaging your brain and spinal cord. About two-thirds of people have furious rabies, with symptoms like aggression, seizures and delirium. Others have paralytic rabies, with weakness and paralysis progressing from the bite wound to the rest of their body. Furious rabies can last a few days to a week. Paralytic rabies can last up to a month.

🔴Coma:

Many people enter a coma in the final stages of a rabies infection. Rabies eventually leads to death

Symptoms

🔴The first symptoms of rabies may be very similar to those of the flu and may last for days.

🔴Later symptoms may include: fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, agitation, anxiety, confusion, hyperactivity, difficulty swallowing, excessive salivation, fear brought on by attempts to drink fluids because of difficulty swallowing water, fear brought on by air blown on the face.

💉Management

There’s no approved treatment for rabies once you have symptoms. If you’ve been exposed to rabies (were bitten by or been in contact with an infected animal), contact a healthcare provider as soon as possible.

👉Clean the wound gently but thoroughly with soap and water. Ask your provider for additional instructions on cleaning the wound.

👉Your provider will give you a series of shots (vaccinations) to prevent the virus from causing rabies. They’ll also give you an antibody treatment(Human Rabies Immunoglobulin) directly to the wound if you’ve never been vaccinated before.

✋Prevention

1. Vaccinate your pets

2. ⁠Keep your pets confined

3. ⁠protect small pets from predators

4. ⁠Don’t approach wild animals

5. Keep bats out of your home

6. ⁠Consider the rabies vaccine if you are traveling or often around animals that may have rabies.

7. ⁠Report stray animals to local authorities.

As always, your well-being is our priority.

Dr Mike

Southern Gem Hospital

The delta Variant of COVID-19 is now spreading fast

The delta Variant of COVID-19 is now spreading fast in our communities and this variant is vicious. Younger people are getting sick and this regardless of age, sex and presence of chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension. The duration of recovery from the severe form of this variant is longer than previous variants with patients needing oxygen for weeks. To witness the anguish of patients and patient’s relatives is a very painful experience for doctors and nurses, the good news is that recovery rate is very high if oxygen support is consistent. A lot of people fall sick and are not even aware they have covid-19 hence they tend not to know what to do and fall victim to this vicious disease. If you have being unwell for more than 3 days and haven’t recovered, if you are progressively getting weaker, finding it difficult to breath, walk or talk, you will need to visit a hospital immediately and get yourself tested.
If you have not being vaccinated, this will be the time to get vaccinated.
Please Use a face mask today.
Please sanitize your hands.
Please avoid parties and social gatherings.
Please protect your parents and reduce their contact with the public if they haven’t been vaccinated.
Stay safe and Stay Healthy.
Dr Dosunmu Jubril Adekunle.
Southern Shore Hospitals.