IUBio

Thanks - rabies: another ?

Tim Fitzmaurice tjf11 at cus.cam.ac.uk
Tue Sep 12 10:57:35 EST 1995


On 12 Sep 1995, Ian A. York wrote:

> In article <XYZ-120995084807 at srquadra.geo.brown.edu>,  <XYZ at brown.edu> wrote:
> >  Question #2:  Are these quarantines really necessary?  Are there no
> 
> They have been highly successful, at any rate: so far as I know there 
> have been no cases of confirmed rabies in the British Isles. 
> 
There have been rare cases of rabies. I've only got available data to 
about 82-83 something like that. From the early 70s to that time there 
were about 10-15 cases of human rabies, all from bites received abroad.

There have been some cases in quarantine, mainly dogs, a coupla cats and 
one leopard cub (that kinda trivia stuck for some reason). There has been 
one case where an animal developed after quaranrtine has elapsed but it 
was dealt with. A little bit of a scare though.

I can dig out these numbers for anyone who is interested, and the sources.
Again I haven't found anything after mid eighties yet, but I may be able 
to get hold of it.

Nonetheless as you say its been efficient. There was an eradication of 
the disease just before WWI, this had to be repeated after that war.
Since 1922 its not been endemic anywhere (I think it was 1922, I'll have 
to check). Basically we don't have rabies in the UK, except as rare isolated
cases coming in from abroad.

There were public worries about the possibility of the Channel Tunnel 
being an entry route, I don't know what precautions if any have been 
taken on that. It would seem that rats etc don't seem to have brought the 
problem in.

Tim



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