Chris Packham - Walking Without Fear

Let's be honest, there are lots of things wrong with the UK. We all like to moan about them but as ever this occasionally shrouds some of our blessings.

Like being able to walk with our children in the countryside without the very real fear that we could contract a disease which is, with only one veritable exception, completely and invariably fatal. Like you get it . . . and then you die. That simple – no tablets, no injections, no treatments and no miracle cures.

If you contract rabies, a viral disease causing acute inflammation of the brain, it’s over. And there is, currently, no dog rabies in the UK, nor has there been for over 90 years.

Rabies is on our doorstep

But in regions of continental Europe, Asia, Africa and America it is endemic and has been a blight for thousands of years because it resides in wildlife populations and then crosses to domestic pets and then on to humans.

Globally up to 60,000 people die of rabies every year, the majority are children and the principal hosts are dogs and bats. All warm-blooded mammals can become infected but some remain asymptomatic.

Why I vaccinate against rabies

Generally speaking you need to be bitten or scratched to contract the infamously maddening disease but it can be transmitted via saliva to the mouth, nose or eyes.  Now, you can be vaccinated, I keep my inoculations up to date because I have the pleasure of meeting animals in my work and fairly often the privilege of being gnawed by them. If they turned out to be rabid I would still need treatment but I would survive. That’s worth about sixty pounds every three years. But of course if you don’t work with animals, don’t travel to do so, then such vaccinations are not really necessary and people don’t have them. But imagine if this horrific disease managed to re-establish itself in the UK . . .?

Thankfully, we have the Pet Travel Scheme which safeguards against rabies without the need for lengthy quarantines.  The UK remains rabies-free. However, most countries in the world are not. The EndRabiesNow campaign is working towards a world where no-one dies from rabies by 2030. You can support the campaign by signing up here: https://endrabiesnow.org/take-action.

Reproduced with the kind permission of www.mypetonline.co.uk

More information can be found here: http://www.mypetonline.co.uk/pet-health/rabies