The anger, of which a man died on Thursday, September 25 in Perpignan, is a systematically fatal disease when the symptoms are declared. Even if it makes tens of thousands of deaths every year in the world, it is almost eradicated in Western France and Europe.
• A disease transmitted by animal saliva
IRA is a viral disease transmitted to humans by the saliva of infected animals, most dogs, generally as a result of a bite or scratch. In 99 % of human cases, the transmission is due to a polluted dog, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Although a transmission between humans is theoretically possible, it has never been observed in practice.
To eradicate this still too deadly disease, who, in association with the World Organization for Animal Health (OMSA) and other actors, launched the “Zero By 30” initiative, whose objective is to eliminate human deaths due to canine rage by 2030.
• Silent disease before being lightning
Pollution does not immediately result in symptoms. They take at least a month to demonstrate, sometimes much more. The patient ends up suffering encephalitis, that is, a brain affection.
Variables, symptoms can be delusions and hallucinations, or, less frequently, paralysis. The fear of water, known as hydrophobia, which results in an involuntary spasm of the neck muscles and diaphragm in view of water, is quite characteristic.
Above all, when these symptoms appear, it is too late: the lethality rate is then 100%, even if extremely rare cases have been reported.
Worldwide, human evaluation is still heavy. Every year, according to WHO figures, IRA kills around 59,000 people, often young and mainly in Africa and Asia.
“IRA is unbridled in many countries: Asia, Africa, including Maghreb, Central Europe, the Middle East, South America …”, details the Ministry of Health in France in its place.
• An almost eradicated disease in France
On the other hand, “the risk of exposure in the French territory is very low,” he explains to AFP Bourhy, head of the National Reference Center for Rabies at the Institut Pasteur, in France. It is this organization that supervises research on death in Perpignan.
For almost 30 years, no carnivore, not only the dog, but also the fox, the cat …) has been contaminated by anger on the French soil. Consequently, human cases are extremely rare: less than thirty since the 1970s.
In more general terms, pollution is also exceptional in the rest of Western Europe. Most of the time, these cases come from contamination in foreign soil or by an polluted animal outside France and returned to the national soil. This was remarkably the case of the last victim, died in 2023 in the Chu in Reims, after being scraped by a cat during a stay in a country of Magreb.
“We periodically have animal -import cases, usually from the Maghreb, but not only: the most distant cases have sometimes returned by the Asian plane,” explains Hervé Bourhy, believing that the situation occurs approximately once a year.
In the case of Perpignan, the researcher warns, however, that nothing makes it possible to establish the pollution mechanism, even if the patient had recently made a trip to the Maghreb.
“All hypotheses are still open,” says the researcher.
In addition, very rare cases of batty pollution in France were observed, with a dead in 2019. But the researchers have already established that this is not the case here, the case is “probably” linked to a dog bite, according to an infection of the Perpignan hospital.
• A simple vaccine is sufficient after pollution
If Hervé Bourhy emphasizes that nothing lends itself to panic in France, asks for vigilance among tourists who go to the areas where anger circulates.
“We must remind travelers on this occasion, especially in Africa or Asia, the risks they face if they are scratched by a dog, a cat, a bat …”, he explains. “In this case, you must consult your doctor or go to an anti -rabic center.”
In fact, anger is one of the only diseases for which a vaccine can be effective after pollution. Therefore, the challenge is to vaccinate after a bite or scratch, but before the appearance of symptoms. And, more traditionally, the vaccine is used to prevent the risk of infection in populations of risk areas. “More than 29 million people receive a rage vaccine every year,” said Who.
Source: BFM TV
