Roughly 36% of the world’s rabies deaths occur in India each year, most of those when children come into contact with infected dogs. In collaboration with key partners, India’s federal government is working with other countries to tackle the problem. Patralekha Chatterjee reports.
Dr Rajendra Singh, a senior doctor at Maharishi Valmiki Infectious Disease Hospital in Delhi, India, knows a thing or two about despair. And regret. He sees it every day in the faces of the parents who bring their children to him for treatment. The children are infected with the rabies virus, and most of them arrive too late. “Families come from far away,” says Singh. “They don’t know that past a certain point rabies is 100% fatal. Once they learn the truth, their first reaction is to go into a state of denial. A week ago, we had a family who started waving currency notes. They wanted us to save their son at any cost.”
Rabies is caused by a virus that is transmitted to humans through the infected saliva of a range of animals. But most human deaths follow a bite by, or exposure to, an infected dog. Between 30% and 60% of the victims of dog bites are children under the age of 15 in countries where rabies is endemic. The Maharishi Valmiki is the only hospital in the city of Delhi that treats rabies patients, many of whom are poor and uneducated and most of whom are children and young people. Like Pinkish Kumar, a five-year-old from a Delhi slum, who was brought to the hospital complaining that he was unable to swallow water. Fear of water or hydrophobia is one of the disease’s tell-tale symptoms. Pinkish had been bitten by a dog. He died three days later.
