KBIA Local
(2008-09-23)
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The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services is encouraging pet owners to make sure their pets are properly vaccinated against rabies.
The warning comes as the Centers for Disease Control recently announced a national shortage of the rabies vaccine for humans. Columbia Environmental Health Manager Gerald Worley says vaccinating pets will help reduce the occurrence of rabies in humans.
There's not a shortage of the vaccine for dogs or cats and so by having your pets vaccinated it should lesson the amount of persons who might have to go through that.
Novartis Vaccines makes the rabies vaccine for humans. The company notified the CDC this week that it will temporarily stop providing the vaccine to humans both before and after they've been exposed. The limited supply of the vaccine is causing concern among veterinarians who are afraid if people don't vaccinate their pets, their health could be at risk.
Dr. Richard Meadows is the Director of Community Practice for Columbia. He says cats present an even greater risk for rabies than most dogs.
And, as it turns out cats are even more dangerous than dogs because less of them are vaccinated but also because they're worse about hiding.
Health Department officials say Missouri is seeing a larger number of rabid wild animals this year. To date the department has reported 51 rabid animals for 2008. That's six more than the average at this time during the past five years.
Meadows says rabies is a problem that should be taken seriously.
You know you only have to look back into history a little ways, and we hope not to repeat history, to find where there were hundreds of people in the United States that died each year of rabies.
State and local health departments are working together to best manage the current supply of rabies vaccine.
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