Texas takes to the air to fight rabies epidemic

SAN ANTONIO -- Texas health officials last week began

air-dropping rabies vaccine in lard-scented pellets to try to contain an epidemic of the deadly disease that has been spread by coyotes and dogs.

In the past seven years, two people in South Texas have died of the canine strain of the disease, and about 1,500 have been treated for exposure. More than 500 animal cases of rabies have been confirmed in dogs and coyotes, officials said.

"In 1988, we started seeing cases of rabies in coyotes in the very southern tip of Texas," said Dr. James Wright, a veterinarian with the Texas Department of Health. "It's been moving northward about 50 miles a year. . . . It's very serious."

The disease is now approaching San Antonio, the most populous city in South Texas with nearly 1 million people -- and an unknown number of unvaccinated dogs.

The concern is that rabies-carrying coyotes will pass the virus, which is easily spread by bites, to dogs, which will in turn infect people.

Rabies, a viral infection that is a form of encephalitis, causes aberrant behavior, leading wild animals to lose their fear of people and domestic animals to become aggressive.

If begun immediately after infection, treatment is successful in humans, health officials say, but untreated rabies is almost always fatal.

The bait drop, about 850,000 pellets spread over 14,500 square miles in a rough arc between Corpus Christi and Laredo, will be repeated over the next several years.

Rabies recently hit San Diego, a South Texas city of 5,000 about 125 miles southeast of San Antonio, when a horse, several dogs and a child were bitten by rabid dogs.