Street Animals Part 1: The Canines

I received 7 or 8 vaccinations that were required prior to travelling to Bangalore. There were 2 items in the health and disease preventative literature that would be more difficult for me to decipher, personally: Rabies and malaria awareness and prevention. In this blog, I will talk about rabies. I talked to everyone I saw, non-stop, for about 3 days, once I knew I was travelling to India, about what to do about rabies prevention. I mean, people in the US get rabies all of the time. How safe could the streets of India really be with all of these purported rogue DOG PACKS roaming?? I did not sleep at times, trying to figure this out. I especially approached people from India that I knew. And people in HR. And people who are healthcare professionals. I STRESSED A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT with my worries. Disrupted their days with my fears….. Should I get the series of 3 shots that are considered a preventative? I googled “India rabies”, I am sure, no less than 50 times. Finally, 2 pieces of valuable information helped me to shape my final decision. My Internal medicine doctor from the US is an Indian. He said “There is no reason to get these”. “They will not help anyway”. The internet, of course, interpreted best, what he, as a medical professional was trying to convey to me (as doctors know so much, and just don’t have time to explain every little thing that they know): “It is important to know that having pre-exposure rabies vaccination does not eliminate the need for future vaccination if you are bitten. If you have had the rabies vaccine previously and are bitten or scratched by a rabid animal, you need two doses of rabies vaccine, on days zero and three; no rabies immune globulin is needed.” In addition, the cost of the (several) preventative rabies vaccinations I would need costs 1K in the US! That is a lot of money, considering if I was bitten by this crazy dog pack, I would still need to find treatment ASAP. So, I made my decision not to get this series, and am so relieved I did not spend  money on this, as my confidence level now, is that I have a better chance of getting rabies from a wild fox in the US (I saw one in my neighborhood) than from these wild dogs in India. Yes, there are stray dogs, but 1) most are lying down when you see them and 2) they are outnumbered by PEOPLE. Your chances drop considerably if you are in a city like Bangalore with so many people. The chance of YOU getting rabies in the middle of thousands of people around you is just a little laughable to me now. What you fear most is rarely your worst reality! 

To come…..Street Animals Part 2: The Bovines.