Killer virus close to home: Rabies within 120km of Papua

FMD may devastate the livestock industry, but rabies is closer to Australia and poses a risk to all mammals — including humans.

A rabies outbreak would be “perhaps impossible” to control in Australia and forever change the way we interact with dogs and wildlife.

As the foot and mouth disease situation continues to unfold on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, experts are now warning of another major threat to Australian biosecurity much closer to home.

Rabies — a virus that can infect all mammals and kills at least 59,000 people a year — has been detected in dogs on Indonesia’s Maluka province, just 120km of West Papua, where it poses a major risk of reaching northern Australia.

University of Sydney veterinary epidemiologist Michael Ward’s research has shown rabies has been carried across the vast Indonesian archipelago in dogs on fishermen’s boats or and those traded for meat and gifts.

Rabies presents as untoward aggression. Picture: iStock

The virus has now reached Indonesia’s Maluku Province, about 120km from West Papua that shares a remote 820km land border with Papua New Guinea — Australia’s closest northern neighbour.

Professor Ward’s modelling shows the highest risk pathways for rabies into Australia are via Torres Strait, far north Queensland and East Arnhem Land, which has led him to repeatedly recommend “all domestic dogs in the Torres Strait should be pre-emptively vaccinated” along with those in the northern peninsula area of Queensland.

But he said “as far as I’m aware … this hasn’t happened” and is “still being talked about”.

The Weekly Times asked Federal Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries last Friday why a rabies vaccination program had not been conducted in the Torres Strait, but received no response.

DAFF’s website states it does conduct an annual survey of dogs on the outer Torres Strait Islands and tests for the virus, but makes no mention of vaccination.

The department does warn “if rabies became established in Australia, the toll on human and animal health would be profound and the cost of response and recovery immense.

“At least 59,000 people die from rabies each year, with the majority of these deaths occurring in Africa and Asia. Over 99 per cent of these cases are caused by bites from infected dogs.”

Professor Ward research has shown that once rabies reaches Australia it would be “very difficult, perhaps impossible, to eradicate” due to free-roaming dog populations and indigenous fauna.

His team’s rabies-spread modelling in the dingo population of far north Queensland predicts 14 per cent of dingoes would be infected and the disease would spread at a rate of about half a kilometre a week.

Foxes, bats and cats can also transmit the virus in their saliva.

Under the Australian Veterinary Emergency Plan the policy is to try and quickly eradicate rabies through a combination of quarantine, movement controls, destruction of infected animals, and vaccination.

WHAT IS RABIES?

Rabies is a viral disease that is invariably fatal, without treatment.

The virus can be transmitted through the blood or saliva of infected dogs, cats, foxes and bats, normally via a bite or scratch.

The virus can infect humans, livestock and other mammals, attacking the brain and nerves, however they are regarded as dead-end hosts, unable to transmit the disease further.

Once infected it can take anywhere from two to 12 weeks before any clinical signs appear, which can vary from aggression, with wild animals losing their natural fear of humans and attacking without provocation, to a paralytic form that eventually puts animals into a coma.

Vaccinations for domestic animals is safe and effective and is normally administered by injection. Oral vaccines are widely used to eradicate the disease in wildlife.

Rabies is widely distributed across the globe.