Rabies Information

Rabies

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    Rabies is a viral disease that causes inflamtion of the brain in warm blooded animals. It can only be transmitted to a human through a bite from an animal or by eating an animal that was infected by the rabies disease while it was alive. Rabies is almost always fatal if the patient is not treated before the onset of severe symptoms. It infects the central nervous system traveling along the spinal cord until it reaches the brain causing death. 
        Usually when a person is bitten or infected if there is not immediate medical attention death is certain. The virus has an incubation period inside the body of a few months and then the symptoms begin to show up and the infected person will die within days. The rabies virus is most commonly transmitted to people by dogs but only in the wild where it can also be transmitted by raccoons, foxes, and bats.  Actually in Europe some countries have almost completely eradicated rabies but bats can carry a similar disease, the most recent documented case of this was the death of an unvaccinated bat handler in 2002.