Rabies program deemed a success

The state has recorded five positive tests for rabid
raccoons in 2007.

CLEVELAND (AP) — A wildlife rabies vaccination program has been deemed a success for halting the spread of the disease through Ohio and into other parts of the Midwest, health officials said.

“We’ve done a good job stopping it in its tracks,” said Kristopher Weiss, an Ohio Department of Health spokesman.

After rabies slipped into Ohio a decade ago, researchers warned that the virus could quickly sweep across the state in little more than three years without intervention. The disease spread unabated along the eastern seaboard after appearing on the border of Virginia and West Virginia in the mid-1970s.

Since 1997, more than 9.7 million vaccine-laden baits have been dropped in 14 Ohio counties. The result has been an immunization barrier that seems to be blocking the disease’s advance, Weiss said.

The only detected breach came in 2004, when raccoon rabies pushed from Ohio’s border counties into Cuyahoga. The state expanded the bait zone that year and added a spring distribution to reinforce the barrier. Tests indicate the disease has not advanced any farther west.

The results show that the federal and state baiting program is effective, said Leslie Real, director of Emory University’s Center for Disease Ecology. He called the effort “a public health success story.”

What it is

Rabies is an infectious virus that attacks the nervous system and is usually fatal unless treated.

Although there have been cases of other rabid animals in the state, including bats, coyotes and skunks, raccoons are targeted for vaccination because they often enter neighborhoods where they can spread rabies to domestic animals and humans through bites and scratches, Weiss said.

The number of rabid raccoons found in Ohio is on the decline — after a spike to 46 in 2004, the number dropped to 34 the following year and 10 in 2006. This year, the state has recorded five positive tests for rabid raccoons — four in Lake County and one in Cuyahoga — not enough to be a considered a major threat to public health.

“It’ll probably never go away completely,” said Frank Kellogg, Lake County’s environmental health director. “We’re stuck with it here, to some extent. But the goal is to prevent it from going west.”

Continuing

Ohio’s latest vaccine drop started last week and will continue into September. Aircraft dispersed the bulk of the 768,798 baits across rural areas along the state’s eastern edge. Local health district workers placed baits by hand in more suburban and urban settings.

At the same time, drops are taking place in Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. All told, nearly 5 million baits will be dropped over 26,000 square miles.

Real said that rabies would be a scourge in the United States if ignored. Worldwide deaths linked to rabies exceed 50,000 annually, primarily because of a lack of treatment and prevention programs in many nations.