People with rabies

Rabies can be said to be a relatively difficult disease to control in the world because it spreads very quickly. Most cases will lead to transmission between people, between animals and people, and even between people and animals. Therefore, when you get rabies, you need to seek treatment first, go to the hospital for examination in time, and it is most important to be cured within 72 hours.

Rabies is known in the medical community as a disease that can only be prevented but not treated. The reason is that once rabies occurs, the mortality rate is 100% and no patient is spared.

However, in daily life, some people do not take rabies seriously and end up losing their lives in vain. An investigation report pointed out that more than 80% of rabies deaths were caused by people who did not take the initiative to protect themselves after being bitten by dogs and followed the rabies prevention methods. Some of these people may be completely unaware of the dangers of rabies and lose their lives unknowingly; others have only a vague understanding of rabies and are indifferent, taking a chance, thinking that bites from "ordinary dogs" will not be serious and that they will not get rabies. They do not promptly go to the epidemic prevention department for active and serious treatment, or the treatment methods are not in place, and end up harming themselves.

In my country, more than 95% of rabies cases are caused by bites from rabid dogs, and the rest are caused by bites and scratches from cats or other domestic and wild animals. The pathogen of rabies is the rabies virus, which is present in large quantities in the saliva of rabid dogs. Studies have found that when a person is bitten by a rabid dog, the rabies virus first multiplies around the wound and invades the peripheral nerve tissue, and then invades the central nervous system along the peripheral nerves at a rate of 8 to 20 mm per day.

After the rabies virus enters the central nervous system, the clinical symptoms of rabies gradually appear. The incubation period of rabies varies greatly, ranging from as short as 10 days to half a month to as long as several years. The length of the incubation period depends on the body's resistance, the number of viruses that enter the body and the virulence of the viruses, as well as factors such as the site of the rabies bite and the depth of the wound. The clinical manifestations of rabies are distinctive, beginning with itching, pain, and numbness around the healing wound. As the disease progresses, patients begin to experience symptoms such as fatigue, loss of appetite, headache, insomnia, and nausea.

The patient then gradually becomes excited, feels fearful, and has allergic reactions to stimuli such as sound and light. There is a feeling of tension in the throat, and the patient often becomes restless and has whole-body convulsions due to stimulation such as the sound of water or wind. Hydrophobia is a specific symptom of rabies. Patients will experience throat or whole body spasms when they hear or see water. In the later stages of the disease, the patient gradually becomes quiet, fear disappears, convulsions stop, muscles relax, the jaw drops, saliva flows from the mouth, reflexes disappear, and pupils dilate. Death often results from respiratory and heart failure and there is no cure.