Fearing cull, Chiang Rai villagers vote to keep pets

By The Nation

 

Photos from Dogs and Cats society Facebook page.

 

Residents of a third village in Chiang Rai's Mae Fah Lung district where rabies has been detected, voted to keep and detain their pet dogs and cats instead of handing them over to livestock officials to be culled.

 

Villagers of Ban Lise village in Tambon Mae Fah Luang of Mae Fah Luang district voted on Friday against handling over their pets to Mae Fah Lung livestock officials to be “handled” in accordance with rabies control procedure.

 

Ban Lise became the third village in Tambon Mae Fah Luang where rabies has been detected. A dog, which died, tested positive for rabies.

 

Last month, Mae Fah Luang livestocks officials took away more than 200 dogs and cats from Ban Mae Salaeb and Ban Jalor villages to be culled, prompting animal rights groups to threaten to invoke the anti-animal-cruelty law to sue the officials.

 

Ban Jalor residents claimed that officials had forced them to part with their pets while the Livestock Department chief claimed that the cull were mercy killings as animals with rabies could not be cured.

 

Anusorn Rat-ananpinij, the chief livestock officer for Mae Fah Luang district, said the stray dog that died of rabies had not shown any symptoms of the disease and it was not known how it had contracted the disease.

Anusorn said since the villagers had voted to detain and monitor their own pets, his office issued a rabies control announcement in the village, banning transport of pets from the village for six months.

 

During the six-month period, pet dogs and cats must be kept in cages. Anusorn said villagers were allowed to use makeshift cases while building or buying permanent ones.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30337875

 

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-02-04

Really good news that common sense has made an appearance here.

6 months is a pretty long time for quarantine though.

Maybe it would have been better if the villagers, had their cats

and dogs inoculated against Rabies,after all it's only 70 THB.

I think everyone who has a cat or dog should have it done,really

it should be mandatory.

regards worgeordie

38 minutes ago, worgeordie said:

Maybe it would have been better if the villagers, had their cats

and dogs inoculated against Rabies,after all it's only 70 THB.

I think everyone who has a cat or dog should have it done,really

it should be mandatory.

regards worgeordie

Well it seems that in Chiang Rai they don't want that, so that's another no-go area on my list.....

25 minutes ago, Thian said:

Well it seems that in Chiang Rai they don't want that, so that's another no-go area on my list.....

Common sense ,sometimes makes no sense here,they cannot

be bothered ,until something goes wrong,happens in so many

ways,Rabies is a nasty disease. 

regards worgeordie

The second type of quarantine (for a potentially exposed animal) is based on less solid evidence. The idea in these cases is to keep the potentially exposed animal isolated while waiting to see if it develops signs of rabies, because there is no other reliable test for rabies in a live animal. For example, if an unvaccinated dog gets into a fight with a rabid raccoon, it would be considered potentially exposed. It would be quarantined (or immediately euthanized… the other option) and monitored to see if it develops signs of rabies. The length of quarantine for non-vaccinated dogs is usually 6 months, but this may vary by region. This helps reduce further rabies transmission by ensuring that a dog that develops rabies during the quarantine period is not roaming at large and able to infect people or other animals. One weakness of this approach is the incubation period of rabies, which can be very long. There is not a lot of objective research on which to base the 6 month time frame (unlike the 10 day quarantine described above). After 6 months, it’s very unlikely the dog will develop rabies, but we can never say it’s 100% because of the rare cases of rabies in humans with extremely long incubation periods. In reality, it’s likely that the vast majority of animals that are exposed will develop rabies before 6 months, so it’s a reasonable time frame. Would it be better to use 4 or 8 months, or something else? Possibly, we just don’t know.

 

https://www.wormsandgermsblog.com/2009/06/articles/diseases/rabies/rabies-quarantine/

4 hours ago, canuckamuck said:

Really good news that common sense has made an appearance here.

6 months is a pretty long time for quarantine though.

Then, what about pets with up to date rabies vaccinations.  All my pets are up to date.  So if an official came by to 'culled' them, we'd have a huge problem.  Anyway, unlike virtually all the dogs in our village, my dogs are fenced and do not roam free. 

They give free vaccinations at the temple at the bottom of the hill on a yearly basis.You get a card signed and a special tag.


Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect

well this animal showed no signs of rabies, i suppose they will wait until someone namely a villager gets bitten by a rabied animal, good post about prevention, head buried in the sand attitude again

has got to be a million dogs roaming the streets of Thailand. i moved from Bangkok where thousand roam the streets ,now live in Jomtien  exactly, same, same.

57 minutes ago, connda said:

Then, what about pets with up to date rabies vaccinations.  All my pets are up to date.  So if an official came by to 'culled' them, we'd have a huge problem.  Anyway, unlike virtually all the dogs in our village, my dogs are fenced and do not roam free. 

I am certain that you would have had no problem in this case if you could prove what you say. I also know that the vast majority of rural villages would not have a single animal that has ever had a vaccination or is ever fenced or caged. Quite a few tied with ropes however.

1 hour ago, KC 71 said:

They give free vaccinations at the temple at the bottom of the hill on a yearly basis.You get a card signed and a special tag.


Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect

They stopped doing that in our village over a year ago.  Good program!  Bad decision to discontinue it.

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

I am certain that you would have had no problem in this case if you could prove what you say. I also know that the vast majority of rural villages would not have a single animal that has ever had a vaccination or is ever fenced or caged. Quite a few tied with ropes however.

We keep up to date vaccination cards and the vet has records too. 

As a poster just mention, our village until about a year ago had a program to vaccinate all the dogs in the village.  They discontinued it.  Perhaps the money for such programs is now needed for million baht watches.

Without getting into a diatribe on the  inappropriate response and the idiocy of the local officials who ignored the pleas of the public health officials to maintain a vaccination program, we are seeing the same strategy play out in  public health. Gone are the HIV screenings, and the promotion of general vaccinations for preventable diseases in at risk and vulnerable populations. (The  large number of migrant workers  are not fully vaccinated and they are reservoirs of disease.)

 

The rabies crisis was preventable by way of vaccinations, and  proper domestic animal control such as spaying and neutering and the elimination of the garbage dumps.  A more pressing issue is that of the rural/urban dwellings with swine and chickens. If you think a few  isolated cases of rabies are cause for  panic, wait until there is a new outbreak of swine or avian related respiratory illness. It's all part and parcel of the public health management effort that includes rabies prevention.

2 hours ago, connda said:

We keep up to date vaccination cards and the vet has records too. 

As a poster just mention, our village until about a year ago had a program to vaccinate all the dogs in the village.  They discontinued it.  Perhaps the money for such programs is now needed for million baht watches.

Or maybe to pay for healthcare?