Fast spread of rabies in Sarawak alarming – Star president

KUCHING: State Reform Party Sarawak (Star) president Lina Soo has expressed alarm at the accelerating spread of rabies, with 41 affected areas announced so far throughout Sarawak.

She said the first rabies case was reported on July 4 last year, and within 15 months, almost all of Sarawak is now facing the threat of rabies in our own garden and backyard, with at least 13 lives needlessly taken.

She thus supports the call of Dr Natasha Lee's call, a board member of Society for Prevention of Cruelty Against Animal (SPCA) Selangor, to seek assistance from Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations (FAO) through Dr Eric Brum, the chief technical advisor at Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD).

Based on The Borneo Post's report yesterday, FAO had already successfully carried out an effective programme to coordinate and facilitate rabies control in 2010; they were able to reduce 11 rabies cases per month to just one per month within 12 months. By 2013, there was only one rabies case.

"As Dr Brum had already developed the model in Bali to control and eliminate the virus in the whole of Indonesia, it is not too late to call out to FAO to bring the programme to Sarawak," she said when contacted yesterday

Soo also supports the strategies outlined by Dr Lee to find the rabid dogs, do preventive statewide mass dog vaccinations, give incentives to promote vaccination of dogs from cross border, and educate the public.

She was, however, skeptical of Bukit Assek assemblywoman Irene Chang’s proposal to call for an emergency sitting of the State Legislative Assembly as the lawmakers were not rabies experts.

"Further distractions which only delay the eradication of rabies from our shores will exacerbate our rabies problem, and hold up the technical solution to this resolvable disease."