made

2006-08-19T04:33:00.000-07:00

Gone too soon

2006-08-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

Today we lost a young girl 13 years of age who had rabies infection. It all started when she was bitten by a rabid dog four months ago at a town 2 hours away from here. At the time of the bite her parents did not seek medical help because they thought the bite was trivial and only got an injection against tetanus infection. meanwhile the same dog had bitten two of her siblings! the dog was eventually killed but it wasn't taken to the vet.

so two weeks ago she started complaing of weakness, irritability and poor sleep. they had gone to several places before they came to our hospital. when we saw her she had hydrophobia(fear of water), very restless and had difficulty breathing. obviously at this stage there was little we could do. we were worried about the other kids though they were asymptomatic. the question was wether giving them the rabies vaccine will be helpful. we searched the literature but did not find any study supporting it. we still went ahead and started the vaccine for them. the parents they were very worried despite our explanations and felt we could still do something and not let their daughter die. it was hard and painful seeing this young once energetic girl unable to eat, drink or sleep. we tried to give her medicines to sleep but it wasn't helpful.

over the last two days her condition had worsened. she could barely talk and became very weak. shortly before she died, she had a convulsion and never recovered from it. i cried as i saw her parents and fiends. i wished i could have done more to save her life but it was beyond me and the most painful part was the fact that if she had gotten the vaccine at the time of the bite maybe, just maybe that could have saved her life. it reminds me of the poor state of our healthcare and the large number of preventable deaths we see on a daily basis. what a sad day.