PKR claims hospital not equipped to treat rabies

KUCHING: Parti Keadilan Rakyat ( PKR) has claimed that Bintulu Hospital is not equipped to test for or treat rabies.

PKR Women’s national vicepresident Voon Shiak Ni said she was told this by a family friend.

“A family friend called me this morning ( yesterday) to say that he had been bitten by a stray cat, which came to his house compound on May 25. He went to Bintulu Medical Centre for an injection for the cat bite the day when he was bitten.

“Due to the call by the State Disaster Management Committee for people who had been bitten by dogs or animals over the last two months to seek medical check-up for rabies, he reported the incident of his cat bite to Bintulu Hospital,” she said in a press statement yesterday.

She said the man registered himself at the emergency ward on July 25 and “was told that the hospital is not equipped with the facility to check for rabies virus as Bintulu is virus free. He was then advised to go to Sarawak General Hospital for the check-up if he is worried about the cat bite”.

Voon said the government should increase preventive measures statewide to prevent the virus from spreading and to save lives.

“The whole of Sarawak was rabies virus free for the past years, but it is here now and have so far claimed five lives. Again, we would like to stress on the importance of prevention is better than cure,” she said.

“We need to acknowledge the fact that we do not know how far the virus has spread as the incubation period for symptoms to show is between two and three months. Therefore, hospitals need to be equipped now and awareness campaigns need to be activated across the whole state.”