Chile Forum

Most of the stray dogs around here seem to scared of people that they will not come too close to even bite- I have told my little one that she is not to touch the dogs and she seems to understand. The Dr said that however if you are bitten go get treated as if it was a dog with rabbies just in case, but the preventitive Vaccine is not necessary.

We did get typhoid shots though, along with a whole lot of other ones too.

Apparently only 2 people have ever survived rabies. The following is from wikipedia:

In 2005, American teenager Jeanna Giese survived an infection of rabies unvaccinated. She was placed into an induced coma upon onset of symptoms and given ketamine, midazolam, ribavirin, and amantadine. Her doctors administered treatment based on the hypothesis that detrimental effects of rabies were caused by temporary dysfunctions in the brain and could be avoided by inducing a temporary partial halt in brain function that would protect the brain from damage while giving the immune system time to defeat the virus. After thirty-one days of isolation and seventy-six days of hospitalization, Giese was released from the hospital.[19]

Giese's treatment regimen became known as the "Milwaukee protocol". To date only one other patient has survived under the protocol, despite numerous attempts at the treatment. Rodney Willoughby Jr., Giese's primary care physician, has asserted that subsequent failures occurred because patients were not given the same combination of drugs used in the initial incident.[citation needed]

On April 10th, 2008 in Cali, Colombia, an eleven year-old boy was reported to survive rabies and the induced coma without noticeable brain damage.[20]

oregon woodsmoke wrote:The death part isn't optional.

When the position of some planets becomes highly unfavorable for you, then some professor of astrology would say that your death is not optional. When questioned, if there is a vaccine against that, they would probably apologize for the negative answer.

Thanks again for all the replies.

We're going to check it out with our GP, but for the moment we'll leave the rabies vaccine as it seems treatment is straightforward to get.

In La Serena they have stray dogs all over.They even bother people on the beach.
They tend to come very near to you.So you never know if they will bite.There have been few attacks.
``Alrededor de 20 mil perros vagos deambularían por La Serena, según cálculo estimativo del jefe de la oficina de Servicio a la Comunidad, Jesús Parra``

Yea, gringos come to Chile and do the 'poor street dog' thing, followed by 'why doesn't this third-world country do something about it'. What few have failed to put together is the reason there are so many street dogs in Chile (relative to the rest of Latin America) is Chileans refuse to kill them like the rest of Latin America (e.g. regular government shootings and poisoning campaigns). Lets face it, even the "enlightened" and "human" United States kills hundreds if not thousands of street dogs for everyone that dies in Chile (e.g. by accident such being hit by a car). Yes, Chile should do something about the street dogs, but then also so should the rest of the World.

bobserb wrote:In La Serena they have stray dogs all over.They even bother people on the beach.
They tend to come very near to you.So you never know if they will bite.There have been few attacks.

Mad cows are all over in Chile, and tend to come very near to you. So you never know if they will bite.

It might have been a good idea to get a rabies vaccination before I had come here - evidently the street dogs will occasionally try and eat a gringo unprovoked. I was walking to the metro on Alameda last Thursday and a pist-off street dog decided to see what my leg tastes like. The bite is not that bad at all, I'm just annoyed that I have to go through the inconvenience of post bite treatment.

Sorry you got bitten. I have been as well, though getting bitten while just walking is truly bad luck. I've been bitten while cycling and rollerblading. The post exposure vax are time-consuming, but of course, better safe than sorry. I still wouldn't tell people to get rabies vax before coming though. I'd say it's more on an as-needed basis. Chileans are not routinely prophylactically immunized against rabies either.