Rabies infection from dog meat

Two people have died after contracting rabies in Vietnam, thought to have been transmitted by eating dog and cat meat.

The two otherwise healthy males presented to hospitals in Vietnam with classic symptoms of furious rabies, both showing signs of hydrophobia and aerophobia.

While neither remembered being bitten by a rabid animal, one had eaten the brain of a stray dog killed by a car, and the other had consumed the brain and other organs of a sick cat he had killed.

In both cases, other individuals also consumed the meat but remained well. And while clinicians could not examine the animals to test for rabies, PCR tests on the men confirmed rabies infection within the recognised incubation period.

The researchers, from the National Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases in Hanoi and Oxford University in the UK, warn that butchering of unvaccinated cats and dogs in rabies-endemic countries should be considered a risk factor for rabies transmission.

The study is published in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine.

The finding comes as another study, in PLoS Biology, finds that the global elimination of canine rabies, the most dangerous vector to humans, is a realistic goal.

Researchers from the UK, US and Canada studied an outbreak of rabies in two districts in Tanzania. They found that while the disease kills 24,000 people a year in Africa, transmission levels from dog bites is actually quite low.

They say that achieving vaccination rates of 60 per cent or more in dog populations in Africa is feasible and could control disease transmission to developed country levels.

This is possible even in areas near wildlife reserves with large populations of carnivorous animals.

“However, we show that rapid turnover of domestic dog populations has been a major obstacle to successful control in developing countries, thus regular pulse vaccinations will be required to maintain population-level immunity between campaigns,” the researchers write.

“Nonetheless our analyses suggest that with sustained, international commitment, global elimination of rabies from domestic dog populations, the most dangerous vector to humans, is a realistic goal.”