Alagoas officially begins the Annual Rabies Vaccination Campaign

News reporter: Fabiano Di Pace
Photos: Marco Antonio (Ascom Sesau) and Tânia Rêgo (courtesy Agência Brasil)

The Annual Rabies Vaccination Campaign officially started in Alagoas, this Monday (18th), and continues until April 22nd. The action takes place at vaccination stations in 101 municipalities in the interior of the State, as the capital already carried out the immunization of felines and canines in January this year.

To carry out the Annual Rabies Vaccination Campaign, the State Department of Health (Sesau) distributed 500 thousand doses of vaccines and syringes to all municipalities in Alagoas. And on February 22nd of this year, the department held a meeting with the 101 Municipal Health Departments (SMSs) to carry out action planning.

During the meeting it was decided that each municipality would define the immunization strategies that best suited their reality, as explained by the coordinator of the State Zoonosis Control Program, veterinarian Clarício Bugarim. “People should contact the Municipal Health Departments to check the vaccination days, times and locations that will be available in their cities and take their dogs and cats to be immunized, thus protecting the entire society against rabies”, he reinforced. .

Features of the disease

Rabies is an infectious disease caused by a virus of the genus Lyssavirus, which affects mammals such as dogs and cats and which can be transmitted to humans through the saliva of infected animals during bites. In humans, it is considered extremely serious, with a mortality rate close to 100%. The vaccine is the main way to prevent the disease.

Among the main symptoms triggered in humans, rabies causes infection; fever; delusions; involuntary, generalized muscle spasms and even convulsions; in addition to spasms of the muscles of the larynx, pharynx and tongue when the patient tries to ingest liquid. In Alagoas, from 1980 to 2024, 100 cases of human rabies were recorded, with the last case diagnosed in 2006, according to data from the Ministry of Health (MS).