Dog bites 6-year-old boy on cheek, dies

On the afternoon of August 18, a leader of the Huong Hoa District Medical Center (Quang Tri Province) said the victim was H.D.P. (born in 2017, residing in Hamlet 5, Khe Sanh Town, Huong Hoa District).

According to initial information, on the morning of August 13, the child was taken to the Huong Hoa District Medical Center for examination with a high fever of 39 degrees Celsius, pale skin, chest pain, difficulty breathing, rapid heartbeat, fear of drinking water, and a panicked expression.

At 4:00 p.m. the same day, the doctor at the Medical Center recommended that the child be transferred to a higher level hospital, but the family did not cooperate and asked to take the child home to be treated with oriental medicine.

At 10:13 a.m. on August 14, the family saw that the baby had stopped breathing and was cyanotic, so they took him back to the hospital. However, upon admission, the baby had stopped breathing and had stopped circulating, and was diagnosed as dead outside the hospital.

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Through epidemiological investigation, 23 days before the onset of the disease (July 23), the child was bitten by a neighbor's dog on the right cheek and was not given anti-rabies serum and vaccine.

The family treated the wound by washing the bite with clean water and applying chili leaves to the wound. From the time the dog bit him until the day he developed the disease (August 12), the child continued to eat, drink, and play normally.

According to the leader of Huong Hoa District Medical Center, rabies is an acute viral infection of the central nervous system, transmitted from animals to humans mainly through the bite of an animal infected with rabies.

The disease can be prevented and treated with vaccines and anti-rabies serum. Once rabies occurs, both animals and humans die.

To proactively prevent rabies, people need to manage dogs and cats according to the instructions of veterinary staff. Specifically, 100% vaccination for dogs and cats, declaration of dogs and cats to local authorities, dogs must be chained, locked up, and must wear a muzzle when going out.

When discovering a case of suspected rabies, a dog biting many people, or many dogs and cats in the area falling ill or dying for unknown reasons, people need to immediately report to local authorities, health or veterinary agencies.

“When bitten by a dog or cat, people should immediately wash the wound under running water with soap for 15 minutes. If soap is not available, the wound can be washed with regular water, alcohol, shampoo, laundry detergent... This is an effective first aid method to limit the amount of virus entering the body,” the leader of the Huong Hoa District Medical Center recommended.

According to Vietnamnet