Minister for Health and Family Welfare U.T. Khader said here on Saturday that the State government intended to declare rabies as a notified disease.
Speaking at the 16th National Conference of the Association of Prevention and Control of Rabies in India (Apricon), he said this will not only help monitor the disease but also control it in the long run.
The Minister said that citizens too had a role to play in creating awareness on rabies and urged them to keep their surroundings clean.
Terming rabies as a preventable disease, Mr. Khader called upon the organisers of the conference to come out with a vision statement and action plan to eradicate the disease.
Pushpa Sarkar, Director, Mandya Institute of Medical Sciences, who was the guest of honour, disputed the figures of 20,000 rabies cases and said it was not accurate as many cases go unreported. She said that the fatalities owing to rabies were a reflection on the health system of the country and hence efforts should be made to control it. She also called for establishing animal bite clinics in all government hospitals to deal with such cases and help the poor.
The two-day conference is being organised by the Department of Community Medicine, MIMS, Mandya.
The organisers said that rabies was not a new disease. But what was alarming was that there were at least 20,000 reported cases of death owing to rabies in India alone.
The global figures for death because of rabies were reckoned to be about 55,000. Though fatal, it was entirely preventable with timely post-exposure prohylaxis for the victim, said the organisers.
Bankim Patnaik, doctor, was given the lifetime award for his work on rabies. Abdul Rahman, president, APCRI, was among those present.
