Lives & livelihoods
Rabies and poverty
In rural Africa and Asia, many families rely on livestock for food or for work. When a donkey, a goat, a cow, or any other animal kept as livestock, dies from rabies, the family who kept the animal also suffer.
Rabies can undermine the livelihoods of poor families by killing livestock or because animals need to be sold, to raise the money for the treatment of somebody who has been exposed to rabies.
Either way, families are left without the income and/or the food the animals gave them.
A family ravaged by rabies
When Jalai's dog, a 3 year old female, developed signs of rabies, the family didn't know where the dog had contracted the disease. They killed her on the second day of abnormal behaviour. Before she died, she bit her own (3 month old) puppy and one of the family’s goats.
Two weeks after the goat had been bitten, it developed symptoms that continued for 3 days, until it was killed and buried.
Six days after the mother dog bit the puppy, it also developed symptoms of rabies. Before Jalai was able to kill the puppy, it bit him, and scratched his elderly father and his ten year old daughter.
Jalai had two small but deep puncture wounds on his left hand. He went to his local dispensary, where they told him he would have to pay for the post-exposure rabies vaccine. He left untreated because he had no money.
29 days after the bite, he started showing symptoms such as shouting, feverishness, and not being able to eat.
Once the disease sets in and symptoms are apparent, there’s nothing that can be done. Although his family tried to get hospital treatment for him, the hospitals turned him away – it was too late. He died at home 4 days later.
The family lost two dogs, a goat, and their main breadwinner - all to a preventable disease.
