Health Alerts

A local news source reports that over the past three months the NE state of KwaZulu-Natal has recorded at least four human deaths from rabies and a fifth case is considered probable. Vaccinations are planned for the region’s animals to check the high rates of rabies infections and cut transmission to humans. The article quotes the NICD: ‘over the past two decades, 41.9% of human rabies cases in South Africa were reported from KZN’. While in the Americas, a PAHO official commented on the region’s achievement in reducing dog-mediated rabies in humans from ‘from a record of 300 cases in 1983 to just 3 cases in 2019’. The planned elimination date for rabies transmitted by dogs in the Americas is 2022. Read More