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Rabies shots rebates handed out

By Li Wenfang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-24 08:07

GUANGZHOU: Health authorities in Guangdong will reimburse rabies-infected residents at least 100 yuan each as an incentive for them to get expensive vaccines.

The move under a new rural cooperative health system is aimed at batting a rising death rate from the disease in the province.

The provincial health department issued the notice earlier this month. Various localities in the province will set their own refunds.

The reluctance of rabies-infected people, particularly those in rural areas, to receive vaccines due to a lack of money has been one of the main causes of the high occurrence of the disease, the Guangdong provincial health department said.

Rabies vaccines, usually a series of five shots for a person, cost about 250 yuan ($37), or 350 yuan for foreign-made ones.

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Guangdong recorded the third-largest number of human deaths from rabies in the past five years, after the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Guizhou province, a report on rabies prevention and control issued by the Ministry of Health in September showed.

In the three years prior to 2008, 1,040 people died from the disease in Guangdong. The number is 263 for the first 10 months of this year, official figures showed.

More than 90 percent of the deaths occur in rural areas, especially the less developed northern and western parts of the province, said He Jianfeng, director of the institute for epidemic disease control under the Guangdong center for disease control and prevention.

Guangdong recorded about 500,000 people bitten by dogs last year. However, He estimates that 1 to 1.5 million were actually bitten, because many villagers seek medical services at clinics below the county level, which do not have a special division for animal-incurred injuries and do not report such cases.

A study of the 244 rabies patients in Guangdong in 2003 and 2004 found only 67 percent of them sought medical help. Among those who saw a doctor, only 63 percent had their wounds washed. About half of the patients did not receive any vaccine and more than 90 percent did not have all the shots necessary.

The study was conducted by a team led by Lu Jiahai, a professor of epidemic diseases with the Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University.

Money is the main reason people do not receive the vaccines.

Per capita net income of rural residents in Guangdong was 6,400 yuan last year, 13.8 percent more than the previous year, official statistics indicate.

About 2.9 million dogs live in Guangdong, said Yu Yedong, deputy director of the Guangdong animal husbandry and veterinary authorities.