From:
sukieferret
Date: 2002-04-26 12:26:00 UTC
Subject: canine and rabies alerts in New England and Middle Atlantic
Thanks for the reminder, Troy Lynn!
Due to many areas having high temperatures during the past
winter the number of infected vector animals with rabies and
canine distemper is up. I know that there have already been
alerts for New England and the Middle Atlantic. Some of these
wild animals include: foxes, raccoons, skunks, groundhogs (not
CD), etc. Having more of vector animals surviving has led to
more infected animals of many susceptible types showing up ,
and hense to the reported CD and rabies numbers being higher,
and the risk of further infections being higher so vaccines are
especially important this year. If you have an animal which has a
history of severe reactions to multiple vaccines then other
precautions: no walks outside on ground, leaving shoes
outside, etc. simply make sense.
The Compendium of Animal Rabies Control can be found in a
link from:
http://geocities.com/sukieslist .
Every state in the nation eventually instituted some form of policy
change that recognizes quarrantines for ferrets if rabies is
suspected after the Compendium was changed in 1998, but
some give more power to local authorities than to state ones
(which seemed to be more the case in the south) but not all of
those local authorities are well informed, and many states will
destroy the animal if the people bitten insist on it, so it is
important to get all three pieces of these Compendium
documents to emergency room physicians (who too often have
no idea that there is a USDA approved rabies vaccine for ferrets
or that quarantines are a safe option as per multiple CDC
studies, and many of whom don't even know how to contact their
state public health vets) and also to get them to local health
officers.