The Government of Mexico confirmed on Tuesday the identification of four cases of people with symptoms compatible with those of the rabies virus, in the absence of laboratory confirmation, but ruled out that it is a health alert.
The undersecretary for Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo López-Gatell, said that the cases are found in the southwestern state of Oaxaca, where there are three allegedly infected minors, and in the northwestern state of Nayarit, where there is a young woman with said symptom.
We recommend this video
“Unfortunately, those children are serious. They are two girls and a boy, brothers, eight, seven and two years old. They were bitten by one or several bats. The elderly are with a disease that clinically seems compatible with rabies, ”he explained at the daily press conference of the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López-Gatell ventured that this Tuesday the laboratory will have the results of the samples taken from the patients, and that in the meantime the minors have been treated with a prophylactic treatment for rabies, using the vaccine and an antibody to neutralize the virus. .
These three cases focus on the rural town of Palo de Lima, some 100 kilometers from the capital of the region, Oaxaca de Juárez, which the undersecretary defined as “very poor, in conditions of very great marginalization and deficiencies in health services.” health”, since the nearest health center is more than two hours away.
In the case located in the state of Nayarit, he added, the patient is a 29-year-old woman who was bitten by a semi-domestic cat, which spent most of its time outdoors in a rural community.
“He has a picture compatible with rabies. We have assisted the government of Nayarit in what corresponds to the treatments and diagnoses”, she stated.
Despite the four cases, he stressed that from a medical point of view there is no health alert, since they are isolated cases and “there is no action that must be taken, rabies cannot be eliminated.”
In addition, López-Gatell emphasized that the rabies virus, which is transmitted to humans through animals, will continue to exist given the impossibility of vaccinating all wild animals.
The official was pleased, however, that in 2019 Mexico was the first country in the world to eradicate rabies transmitted from dogs to humans.
With information from EFE
