TREND OF ANIMAL BITE CASES REPORTED TO ANTI RABIES VACCINATION CLINIC AT A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL.

Abstract

Introduction: Rabies is a fatal viral zoonosis and serious public health problem. Though 100% fatal ,it is a 100% preventable disease .Rabies is a global burden and a fatal disease of the central nervous system .WHO reports around 55,000 rabies deaths out of which 20000 deaths are estimated to occur in India alone with 17.4 million exposures to animal bite every year. Rabies is transmitted to humans through animal bites, mostly dogs. Objectives: 1. To study the trend of animal bite cases over a period of last 10 years. 2. To study the distribution of cases according to gender, season and type of animal bite. Materials and Methods: This record based cross sectional study was carried out at the anti-rabies vaccination (ARV) clinic. All the new cases of animal bites reported to ARV clinic during the last 10 years, from January 2011 to December2020 were assessed. Data is presented using percentages and proportions. Results: In our study the number of animal bite cases were continuously increasing since 2011 till 2019 with an exception in 2013 and 2020 in which there were slight decrease in cases. Month wise distribution of animal bite victims attending the ARV clinic having highest number of animal bite cases in December i.e. 2951 followed by November (2878) followed by January (2874). Out of total 31,677 animal bite cases 28,303(89%) were urban & 3374(11%) were rural. The ratio of urban to rural is 8.3:1. Among the cases, 69% were males and 31% were females. Majority of the cases were of dog bite (88.75%) followed by cat bite (7.3%) and monkey bite (2.2%) and 1.75% of the cases were bitten by other animals. Conclusion: Thus, an increasing trend of animal bite cases is seen and this shall increase in the future also. So appropriate preventive & control measures with intersectoral coordination should be enhanced in endemic areas in a developing country like India.