Informative Essay On Rabies

In our world today, rabies is a disease that is still alive. “Over the past one hundred years rabies cases in the United States has changed dramatically, more than 90% of all animal cases reported annually to CDC now occur in wildlife, however before 1960 the majority were in domestic animals and deaths went from more than 100 annually to 2 to 3 per year” (www.cdc.gov/rabies/). “Ninety-nine percent of people who have rabies have been bitten by a rabid dog” (www.heathline.com). “Forty percent of people who are bitten by suspect rabid animals are children under age 15”(www.mayoclinic.org). According to WHO, up to 59,000 people worldwide die from rabies every year.(www.heathline.com) Rabies is one of the most neglected diseases in the world. (www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheet/)

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“The virus can enter the peripheral nervous system directly and migrate to the brain or replicate within muscle” (www.medicalnewstoday.com). “The rabies virus is a rod-or bullet-shaped single-stranded negative sense, un-segmented enveloped RNA virus” (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). “The virus genome encodes five proteins: nucleoprotein (N), phosphoprotein (P), matrix protein (M), glycoprotein (G) and polymerase (L)” (www.cdc.gov/rabies/transmission/virus.html). “The rabies virus occurs in more than 150 countries and territories and is present on every continent with the exception of Antarctica. Some of the factors that can increase your risk of rabies stated by MayoClinic are: “traveling or living in developing countries where rabies is more common, including countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, activities that are likely to put you in contact with wild animals that may have rabies, working in a laboratory with the rabies virus, and wounds to the head or neck may help the rabies virus travel to the brain more quickly”