Earlier this year, in September, a Wyoming resident was diagnosed with the plague. The woman had contracted it from her cat. To be specific, she was diagnosed with pneumonic plague, which is a form of the plague that is rare. Even in this day and age, it is very uncommon, (but not impossible) for the plague to be around. According to the CDC, during the years 2018-2019, the United States saw only one case each year.
Rabies is a zoonotic illness – meaning that it is spread from animals to humans. If scratched or bitten by an animal that is carrying rabies, emergency medical attention is always needed to prevent any effects from the bite. The most common animals that carry the rabies virus are bats, coyotes, raccoons, skunks and foxes. Other animals can also be affected by the virus as well.
Without prompt treatment, rabies is a fatal disease. Once bitten, if treatment isn’t sought for a potential rabies infection, once symptoms begin to set in, it is too late to do anything else other than making the person affected comfortable. The infection sets itself in your central nervous system, eventually making its way to the brain and causing death. Symptoms of rabies include:
Typhoid fever is a life-threatening illness caused by the bacteria Salmonella serotype Typhi. It’s a common traveler’s related disease, with around 21 million reported cases of typhoid globally each year. Typhoid is a highly infectious bacterial infection that is usually spread through the ingestion of food or water that has been contaminated by feces. Once infected, typhoid can affect multiple organs within the body, and without proper treatment, can lead to complications and even death. Currently it’s estimated that up to 1 in 5 people will die if their typhoid fever is left untreated. Luckily, there are preventative methods and treatments plans available to both help prevent and treat typhoid.
By the time a person realizes they have rabies or starts showing symptoms, it’s typically too late. That’s a scary thought, especially since rabies is a disease known to change the behavior of those infected.
There are so many diseases in the world, many of which we have vaccines, treatments, and other preventative measures for. With medicine and healthcare being as advanced as it is, one might think there would be better treatments for rabies. But the truth of the matter is that unless a person knows they were bitten by an infected animal, there is no way for them to know if they have rabies, especially since symptoms don’t start to show until it is too late.
Since 2020, COVID-19 numbers have been surging, with multiple variants, that have killed thousands of people. It can be hard to navigate the world of traveling, especially with a pandemic surging around the world and here at home. Sometimes, we have to travel for work, or we need to be somewhere for reasons unknown to us.
Travel can be something that may seem scary with the pandemic around, but it doesn’t have to be. There are precautions you can take, and procedures to follow if you do happen to test positive while you are abroad. What happens if you catch COVID-19 while traveling? We’ll answer that below.
