These workers should be immunized to ensure that they have protection before having contact with any animal.
Some workers such as veterinarians or animal control officers have continuing risk of encountering a rabid animal. However, rabies will continue to be a threat until the virus can be eliminated from the wild animals that spread the virus to pets and people. Vaccination programs, established to immunize dogs and cats, have been effective in reducing rabies in pets. What laboratory tests are available for rabies?Īll workers at potential risk of contracting rabies should be informed about the disease, its characteristics, and the nature of the risk.Īgricultural, public health, veterinarian, and occupational health officials share the responsibility to control rabies in animals and to protect people. Dogs usually become excitable, and may be vicious, wander aimlessly, and bite for no reason.Īny animal exhibiting unusual behaviour should be considered a potential rabies hazard for humans.Cats can often become extremely vicious.Cattle usually become restless and aggressive, bellow loudly, drool, may show gradual weakness in the hind legs, and appear to be choking.Foxes and skunks may lose their shyness and fear of people, pets, or livestock.Or it may appear as "dumb rabies" in which an animal changes behaviour, becomes withdrawn or more affectionate, tries to hide, has difficulty swallowing, and dies after a few days without ever becoming violent.Īll animals do not behave in the same manner when they have rabies. Eventually the animal becomes paralyzed in the throat and hind legs, and dies. It may appear as furious rabies in which the animal changes behaviour, becomes restless, wanders aimlessly, and bites any animal, person, or object in its way. In animals, rabies appears in two different forms.
A coma slowly develops, and eventually death occurs. With this form of the disease, the muscles gradually become paralyzed, starting at the site of the bite or scratch. This fear is why rabies has sometimes been called "Hydrophobia." Sometimes "paralytic rabies" develops instead of furious rabies. At this stage, victims have an uncontrollable fear of water. "Furious rabies" may follow, for which the signs are strange behaviour including biting other people. A period of extreme worry, irritability, inability to sleep, and depression follows, possibly with hallucinations. Soon afterwards, there is a period of tiredness, possibly with lack of appetite, headache, fever, cough, sore throat, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Initially, a person who is bitten may notice unusual feelings or tingling around the wound. In people, rabies progresses through several stages. It is important to recognize the signs of rabies in animals and take precautions immediately following bites, scratches, or other potentially infectious contact. Once the signs appear, the disease is almost inevitably fatal within weeks of symptoms appearing, if not treated. Workers who may have been exposed to rabies must never wait until they develop signs of the disease. What occupations have increased risk of rabies? The rabies virus is not infectious if it has dried out or exposed to sunlight. The virus can become inactive, but the rate at this occurs depends on moisture, sunlight and temperature.
Contact with the blood, urine or manure of a rabid animal is not a risk factor for contracting rabies. It has also happened in the laboratory where improper procedures produced a mist or aerosol containing the virus. This phenomenon has occurred in bat caves. In unusual situations, workers have contracted rabies by breathing air that carried high concentrations of the virus. Laboratory workers have also contracted rabies from cuts or sticks from contaminated needles, scalpels or other contaminated laboratory equipment. Farmers or veterinarians can become infected when they work with their hands in the mouths of rabid cows which often appear to be choking on food. Usually, transmission occurs when rabid animals, with the virus in their saliva, bite people. Droplets containing the virus can pass through mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, mouth, or intestine. The virus can enter the body through broken skin. To cause an infection, the rabies virus must enter the body and reach nerve cells.