Dr. Praveen Kulkarni
"During my interaction with villagers and from baseline survey, I was surprised to know that very few people were aware of the fatal nature of the disease and majority of them thought that rabies can be cured.
I encountered a boy named Raju, 12 years old child from Kumbalgodu which is one of our project villages. He was the only son to his parents who were laborers belonging to lower socioeconomic status. Raju was bitten by a dog over face, neck and left leg while he was coming home from school. As both his parents went for the work no one was there to take care of him. Neighbours applied jackfruit gum, turmeric powder and cloth bandage to the wound. He was not taken to the hospital as his parents could not afford rabies immunoglobulin and vaccines. One of our village level health workers (rabies volunteers) came to know about the incident and rushed to the place. She removed the bandage, washed the wound with soap and water and informed me regarding the incident. I advised her to bring the child to our health centre immediately and provided modern post exposure prophylaxis (rabies Immunoglobulin and antirabies vaccine) free of cost. Raju received complete course of antirabies vaccination as per schedule and now is hale and hearty.
Due to the continuous efforts by the project team towards creating awareness among villagers regarding rabies and its prevention through various methods like showing public video film on rabies on weekdays, wall paintings and posters on rabies prevention, involvement of traditional folk media, community mobilization, creating a separate cadre of village level workers (rabies volunteers) resulted in more and more animal bite victims seeking post exposure prophylaxis."
