Rabies: Get your pets vaccinated

Pet owners can have their cats and dogs vaccinated for free against rabies on 24 November at the West Acres shopping centre in Potchefstroom.

The rabies campaign, which will run from 08:00-18:00, is also an opportunity to donate food and blankets to the Potch Animal Welfare Society (P.A.W.S), according to the shopping centre’s Facebook page.

Hundreds of pets – 300-400 – were also vaccinated on 29 September when P.A.W.S and the state veterinarian had another rabies drive. “A pet needs to get a rabies jab once a year,” says Etienne Jansen van Vuuren, the kennel and maintenance manager at P.A.W.S.

The importance of rabies vaccinations was highlighted in September when a nine-year-old boy from Motherwell, Kwazulu-Natal, died from rabies after he was bitten by an infected dog. Rabies is a fatal viral infection that affects the nervous system and most reported cases in South Africa involve domestic dogs.

The National Institute of Communicable Disease (NCID) of South Africa reports that rabies is found in the saliva of rabid animals, but human rabies is rare, with only eight cases confirmed to date in 2021.

The districts of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal have been hardest hit with an increase of rabies cases in dogs in 2021. About 150 dog rabies cases have been reported in the Eastern Cape, at least 70 of those cases from the Nelson Mandela Bay district, and about 200 cases in KwaZulu-Natal.

News24 reported that the first reported cases of rabies in dogs in the Western Cape province in decades after the Western Cape Department of Agriculture Veterinary Services reported two confirmed dog rabies cases from Khayelitsha in the City of Cape Town.

“Caring and protecting for my animals is important to me and taking them for their annual rabies vaccinations at the P.A.W.S rabies drives help to protect them in case they come in contact with an infected animal,” said Zenobia Smit, a pet owner who participated in the September rabies drive.

Since rabies is not common in Potchefstroom-area, it is very seldom that P.A.W.S handles rabies cases in this district, but they do occur.

The workers at P.A.W.S estimate around two to three cases that test positive for rabies, but there are a lot more suspected cases that come back negative.

The most common and visible signs of rabies would be stereotypical behaviour like drooling and foaming at the mouth, aggressive behaviour, muscle spasms, red eyes, and uncontrollable excessive movement like running into random objects, trees and wall. If your pet shows any of these symptoms, seek immediate medical attention for your pet.

“Rabies carriers commonly found in this area would be meerkats, foxes, bats, dogs, chipmunks, rodents, jackals, and wolves. The more uncommon animals are luckily not home to our area,” says Tommy Viljoen, a former employee at S.P.C.A. Potchefstroom.

Darren Kruger, the chairperson of P.A.W.S, said the drive in Septebmer was successful but he still encouraged pet owners to get their pets vaccinated against rabies. – Deo-Doné Gous