INDEPTH: HEALTH
Rabies
CBC News Online | June 23, 2004
Rabies is a virus that attacks the central nervous system.
It's one of the oldest recorded infectious diseases, and there's
a new carrier on the scene in Canada - raccoons.
The carrier |
Raccoon rabies is the same disease as regular rabies, except that
raccoons are the primary carriers. The disease resides in the
animal's brain, and is transmitted through its saliva - a bite or
a lick from an infected animal can pass on the virus.
Symptoms range from aggressive behaviour to paralysis and even
death - if left untreated. Some 20 people have died from rabies in
Canada since 1925. The most recent death was in 2000. A nine-year-old boy from Quebec contracted the disease in September. Diagnosis was difficult, and the boy unfortunately died in early October.
Antirabies vaccine, given soon after a bite from a rabid animal, is
almost always effective.
So far, no one has ever died from the raccoon
strain of rabies, but the potential is there.
Ontario alone has a population of approximately one million raccoons.
They have adapted well to living in urban and suburban areas and aren't
all that afraid of humans. Some people like to feed and handle them.
As a result, both humans and pets are more likely to interact with a
raccoon than with most other potential rabies carriers.
For this reason, Canadian officials have been worried for some time about
raccoon rabies entering Canada. Discovered in Florida 50
years ago, it has been spreading north through the United States.
For several years, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has been
trapping, vaccinating and releasing animals near the major border
crossings. They are trying to build up buffer zones of vaccinated
raccoons to minimize the spread of the virus.
But raccoon rabies made it through the buffer zone. Three cases
were diagnosed in Ontario in 1999 - outside the vaccination area.
The first was in a farmyard near Brockville; the second showed up
some 20 kilometres away in Prescott. Those cases appeared in July, and
then in September, a third case was diagnosed 20 kilometres north of
the first two.
Now the debate will centre on how to stop the spread of the virus
within Canada.
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