Mediaboss Marketing

Saturday, March 17, 2012

DOGS are known as mans best friend, yet the fangs that hide behind the happy face can be deadly, a rabid dog can kill.

There are a lot of stray dogs and cats around the streets of Davao city that may be carrying the rabies virus and are a threat to the people around especially children. Thats why Davao City has an Animal Bite Center (ABC) office that became operational in 1998. It provides treatment to all dogs, cats, monkeys and rat bite patients of the city and from other provinces of Region XI. They offer free Post Exposure Treatment (PET) to 100% of high-risk animal bite patients.

Their goal is to reduce the incident of human rabies by year 2004 and eliminate human rabies and declare a rabies free Davao City by year 2020.

Are they anywhere near their target?

Marl Bohol, an entrepreneur and a victim, was bitten by a cat and so he went to ABC for treatment. When he got there, a lot of patients were waiting in line for treatment. But it was not the main problem, there were no medicines available. The registration area was full of patients lining up for their medical prescription.

The patients were advised to buy the anti-rabies vaccine with the box consisting of four vials worth P1,900, and their own syringe for 10 pesos each. Most of the patients could not afford to buy the whole box so they resort to group themselves into four so that each of them would only pay about 500 pesos each.

But the problem is each patient has to have three shots of anti-rabies within a period of time, so the scenario in the ABC office goes on every day, with one rabies patient returning for his next shot looking for three other patients to divide the cost of a box of vials with.

In Marls case, he said, that he waited for more than an hour, but still no medicine was available. He asked the lady in the registration area and the woman said that he could come back the next day for available medicine.

Marl was not willing to wait much longer and pestered the woman further. The woman told him to wait as she texted somebody. A few minutes later, a woman arrived offering to share her box.

The rest is here:
Killer bite