When someone is bitten by a rabid animal in the US, it still makes the news. Maybe not national news, but incidents of people being bitten by bats and dogs and raccoons — even if no one dies — still merit local headlines. And the prospect of rabies is enough to send Americans into fits of worry. A recent story out of New Bedford, MA, for instance, describes a man beating a suspected rabid fox to death with a stick after it bit one of his neighbors.
Rabies only kills about three people every year in the US, but as many as 55,000 die every year in the rest of the world — with 50,000 of those deaths occurring in Africa and Asia. Why? In part, it’s because those living in rural areas often have little-to-no access to healthcare. But it’s also because rabies treatments are prohibitively expensive in Africa and Asia.
via The Verge
