Colombia: Human rabies death reported in Huila Department

July 2, 2021

Headlines, Latin America and the Caribbean

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The National Institute of Health (INS) confirmed to the Department of Health of Huila, a case of death due to the rabies virus, which affected a young man who had been referred for hospital care from the municipality of La Argentina.

“We come from the previous year on Red Alert for the case of human rabies that occurred in the municipality of Neiva, a measure that is maintained when this new case is notified and that the Departmental Council of Zoonosis has already convened to resume contingency strategies.”, announced the Secretary of Health of Huila, César Alberto Polanía Silva.

Once the INS issued the alert, the Government of Huila, through a circular sent to the 37 municipalities of the department, asked the territorial entities and the actors of the health system to take prevention, surveillance and notification of possible new cases of human rabies or reports of animal aggression that could mean transmission of the virus.

The Secretary of Health of Huila also announced that in the areas near the municipalities of La Argentina, La Plata, Tarqui and Oporapa, the active search for cases of human rabies will begin, in order to determine “the foci and peripheries”.

Therefore, as detailed by the health official, in these areas “rabies vaccination will be intensified in domestic animals, but also in people who are part of the epidemiological fence of the confirmed case.”

this is the second case of death from human rabies that has been reported in the department of Huila. The first was registered in September 2020, when the Ministry of Health reported that a 26-year-old woman had died in Neiva, after being bitten by her cat, which transmitted the virus to her.