RABIES in Europe?

When the directors of the game of life lose their idea of ​​what to do with the episodes in the 2026 season, they start throwing in incredible plot twists - RABIES is returning to the EU through a back door?

Time to panic or just a timely warning to work on prevention?

So let's dive into this educational text about one of the oldest recognized and described diseases in the history of mankind. A horiffic disease that is contradictory to itself (100% preventable, yet 100% deadly).

Let's start with CAUSATIVE agent!

🧬 Causative agent is the rabies virus, belonging to the Rhabdoviridae family and Lyssavirus genus.

🧬 Fortunately for both animals and humans, it is considered to be a "lazy virus". it does not spread quickly or easily (like the influenza virus). It requires an intermediary to introduce the virus into the (deep) tissues, most often via bita (but saliva in contact with mucuous membranes or open wounds can also be the source of infection).

Once inside the body, it multiplies in muscles and spreads to peripheral nerve endings from where it slowly travels toward the central nervous szstem, specifically, the body's "supercomputer"-the brain.

It moves through the body at a rate rangin from a few milimeters to several centimeters pe day, resulting in relatively rapid disease progession.

 Upon reaching the brain, it causes severe inflammation (encephalitis) and subsequently spreads via the nerves to the salivary glands; in approximately 80% of cases, this triggers the classic sign of rabies: foaming at the mouth.

Stephen King masterfully brings the horror known as rabies to life in this cult classic!

🧬 The incubation period of the disease* varies and depends on the mode of transmission and location.

*Incubation = the time from the entry of the pathogen into the body to the first signs of the disease.

The best example of incubation is when you get an unvaccinated puppy from a back-yard-breeder, you go to vaccinate it, but 5 days after vaccination the puppy develops signs of parvovirus. In this case, the vaccine did not fail, but the virus was already in the body and the vaccine did not even have time to start working!

📜 HISTORY

The oldest known RECORD of rabies comes from Mesopotamia, from the Eshnun Inscription (1900 BC). It is likely that people had noticed the disease long before that and that the description was passed on orally. It was also mentioned by the ancient Egyptians, and later by the Romans (Aristotle's writings being perhaps the most famous).

Photo source is this paper worth of reading: https://www.mdpi.com/2414-6366/2/2/5

All cultures described it the same way: Dogs suffer from madness. Everyone they bite dies.

Aulus Cornelius Celsus in the 1st century expanded the description to what modern medicine still sees and describes today: HYDROPHOBIA (fear of water) and recommended washing the wound.

At this link you can see what a fear of water looks like (the sick person or animal is thirsty, wants to drink, but when looking at water painful spasms of the throat occur). WARNING: the video may be disturbing! (Rabies is no joke!). In the Middle Ages, Rabies inspired stories about WEREWOLVES (convulsions, foam, hydrophobia, animals attacking people...).

Folklore arises as a result of something people see and cannot explain! Mad dogs become werewolves that attack and kill people!

🧪 Great breakthrough came in the 19th century when Louis Pasteru and Emile Roux developed an effective vaccine against rabies.

The last recorded cases of rabies in humane in our region was in 1964 in Yugolsavia (but at the teritorry of Croatia). Later, 2 more cases imported from Bosnia were recorded. Zadnji zabilježeni slučaj bjesnoće kod ljudi u nama bližim krajevima bio je 1964. u Jugoslaviji (ali na području Hrvatske). Kasnije su se javila još 2 uvezena slučajeva kod ljudi koji su došli iz BiH.

🌐 However, around , 70.000 ljudi throughout the world die from rabies every single year!

For comparison, that is the population od Zadar or Velika Gorica.

🦇🦝🦡🐺🦊 Unvaccinated dogs (most often strays) are responsible for 99% of humanr abies cases.Various animals can be reservoirs of the disease (e.g. in America, there is a big problem with bats because they usually bite at night, the bite is almost imperceptible and people usually do not even feel it), but in Europe the main reservoir of rabies was/is the fox.

💊Oral vaccination of foxes (dropping bait with vaccine from an airplane) is the main reason why most EU countries (and some bordering the EU) have become "rabies free".

This is oral vaccine with the bait for foxes. Do not touch it if you see it in the field and do not let your dogs eat it.

Croatia started an oral vaccination program for foxes (self-vaccination) in 2011. The last case of rabies was recorded in 2014, and since 2021 we have had the status of a rabies-free country. Hand in hand with this, legislation regarding regular vaccination of dogs usually changes - from an annual obligation to a two- or three-year obligation.

🆘🆘 In 2026, rabies began to quietly make a comeback in EU member states (though in Poland it had already reappeared in 2021), and the reasons for this are considered to be twofold:

1. Wars. Obviously, it is not enough to destroy lives, infrastructure, countries and the future. Due to the interruption of monitoring and preventive actions in war-affected countries, it was possible to re-establish the chain of disease transmission between reservoirs because animals do not know and do not recognize borders or border controls.

2. Decline in dog vaccination rates.

The most dangerous thing is when you pass a law that says you don't have to get your pet vaccinated every year, but then you "forget" to check whether people are getting their pets vaccinated at all. And people being people - why would they spend money on something they've never seen?

And then there are the "anti-vaxxers" who claim that it's a fabrication by "big pharma" (the pharmaceutical industry) to poison animals and take money out of your pocket.

When it comes to rabies, this anti-vaxxing would mean that the pharmaceutical companies that produce the rabies vaccine (e.g. Boehringer, Ceva, MSD, Virbac) are actually at least 4,000 years old and that they designed and cooked up this disease back in Mesopotamia (and maybe even earlier). Those tricky, tricky companies, working way before it was cool!

🌐Countries where rabies was recorded in 2026 are: Italy (Veneto region), France (one person died from rabies), Romania (more than 100 cases of infection and 1 human death), Poland (since 2021), Slovakia and Hungary (2 strains of rabies) and Ukraine.

Before I end this educational text with a description of the symptoms of rabies, the triple examination, and why we must euthanize an animal to make a final diagnosis, here are a few interesting facts from my private life:

1. My dad worked in Romania for a while (when I was in high school), which was notorious for its stray dog ​​populations. We were on the phone, he was walking back to the hotel, and suddenly he said: I have to go, I was just bitten by a dog! It was a real adventure to get to a vaccine:) Fortunately, there was no trace of the bite after the wound healed.

2. My first year of veterinary studies. Anatomy and we are watching a cow's autopsy. That was in 2008. Soon a call comes from the student's office: Have you been vaccinated against rabies? If not, urgently go to Fran Mihaljević for vaccination. The cow was proven to have rabies. Later, a horse arrived and was subsequently confirmed to have rabies. Not a single animal had typical signs of the disease.

3. A few years later, at the internal medicine clinic, we were greeted by a 5-month-old puppy, a small breed. He came from the suburbs of Zagreb. Weak, lethargic, feverish, not eating well. We gave him therapy, but to no avail. Soon, another call: Have you been vaccinated?

I checked my immunity by checking the titer - if I had enough antibodies, I did not repeat the protective vaccination.

Back to symptoms.

🐾Once symptoms appear (whether in humans or animals), there is no cure. The mortality rate is 100%. There have been a few cases recorded in the world where people have survived, but that survival has involved horrific neurological damage. So, maybe it would have better if they didn't.

Initial phase: flu-like symptoms. Fatigue, malaise, muscle pain, tingling, fever, headache and pain around the bite site.

Advanced disease has 2 forms: FURIOUS OR MANIC RABIES: the movie version. Severe spasms, aggression, sensitivity to light, hydrophobia (fear of water, although it is not fear, but a painful tightening of the pharynx muscles at the sight of water. The person or animal wants to drink, but the pain is such that symptoms resembling fear of water/liquid appear), hallucinations and extreme agitation (they cannot calm down, sensitivity to sounds and air currents). Increased salivation, which is why the well-known description of "foaming at the mouth" appears. Such animals completely change their behavior and attack humans, not giving up even after being hit. Stephen King described rabies well in his horror film "Cujo" about a beloved family St. Bernard dog that becomes infected with rabies. PARALYTIC or SILENT RABIES: animals retreat to secluded places. Progressive weakness. Then paralysis. Coma and finally death.

💉 If the description alone isn't scary enough to make you NOT FORGET to vaccinate your dog (and cat), read the horror film "Cujo" or watch documentaries about rabies on YT!

👩‍⚕️TRIPLE EXAMINATION of dogs. After an attack/bite, the owner of that dog is required to come for a three-time examination by a veterinarian: day 0 (the day the bite occurred), day 5, and day 10. It is considered that this is a sufficient incubation period and that if the dog does not show any signs that would indicate rabies during that period, rabies is excluded as a danger to humans. Vaccinated dogs must also undergo a three-time examination.

Diagnosis of rabies in animals? Killing (euthanasia) and sending a brain sample for pathohistology. Because special bodies (cytoplasmic inclusions within the nerve cells of the brain), called Negri bodies, are the only reliable evidence of rabies.

Negri bodies in the brain tissue. Final confirmation that the patient was infected with rabies.Source https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Negri_bodies

💉 Vaccine? Inactivated rabies virus. Inactivated means that the virus has been killed by chemical or heat and CANNOT CAUSE the disease, but it is enough to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies.

❗️Don't forget to vaccinate your dog, especially if you are planning a trip to one of the countries where rabies has been re-confirmed or where it has never been eradicated.

And to those who tell you that this is a fabrication, tell them to travel to India (where there is a very high number of deaths from rabies), find a rabid dog, get infected and live-stream the pleasure!

This educational text is protected by copyright. Copying and using the text without attribution is prohibited. #vetkatapproved #rabiesinEurope #vaccinateyourdog #dograbies #veterinaryadvice