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A 26-year-old woman died in Neiva, Huila, from rabies transmitted by a cat that he kept at home as a pet and did not have a rabies vaccination scheme.
César Alberto Polanía, Secretary of Health of Huila, affirmed that the bite occurred in the Las Palmas neighborhood on August 26 when the woman tried to help him since the animal was with profuse salivation, irritability and had been lost for a day.
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“He took him to the vet but when he took him out of the element in which he was being transferred, he was bitten by the pet,” said the official, adding that unfortunately the victim he sought medical help about 25 days after the incident.
The onset of symptoms was on September 18 but the woman consulted the medical services 5 days later, for which she was admitted to an Intensive Care Unit at a clinic in Neiva where passed away on September 25.
“Due to the symptoms, samples were sent to the National Institute of Health (INS) that confirmed the contagion of rabies in humans “, said the Secretary of Health and added that the hypothesis is that it is a cat infected by a variant of wild rabies.
To avoid contagion, the authorities in the city of Neiva carry out medical studies and follow-ups on people who have had close contact with the deceased.
The work is done in conjunction with an immediate reaction team from INS.
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The Secretary of Health of Huila recommended that any person attacked by a dog, cat, bat, fox, other wild animals or production animals, you should go to the health service immediately closest to your evaluation and treatment by the emergency service.
Jairo Hernández, deputy director (e) of Environmental Health of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, said that rabies is a zoonosis caused by the rabies virus, which it is transmitted by contact with skin and mucous membranes, usually through saliva of an infected animal, almost exclusively by the bite, although it can occur by contact of saliva with skin lesions or with intact mucosa, secretions or tissues from infected animals.
In the department of Huila, the last outbreaks of rabies in production animals were reported in 2005 in the Acevedo municipality and in 2011 in the Palermo municipality. In 2016, a case was reported in a bat in the municipality of Yaguará.
So far this year in Colombia, 75,911 cases of assaults on humans by potentially rabies-transmitting animals have been reported. With respect to the same period in 2019, a decrease of 26.6 percent is observed.
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At this time, a case of rabies confirmed by the National Institute of Health in a cat is under investigation, in the municipality of Anapoima, Cundinamarca.
To avoid cases of human rabies transmitted by dogs and / or cats, the National Government purchased 6,469,000 doses of rabies vaccine for dogs and cats, whose investment reached $ 3,965 million. The goal for 2020 is to vaccinate more than 6 million dogs and cats.
The Ministry also purchased 200,000 doses of human rabies vaccine and 25,000 vials of serum to deal with any situation generated by the bite of animals infected with rabies virus.
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