Rabies

RABIES IS MAKING a comeback. Last year, Anne Arundel County's Animal Control Department handled 97 confirmed rabies cases, more than any other Maryland jurisdiction.The number was twice as many as in 1995, which was double the number for 1994. Although most of the rabid animals handled by animal control were wild, the mushrooming number of cases reinforces the wisdom of having dogs and cats vaccinated.Rabies is an infectious disease that affects the central nervous system of mammals. The disease is invariably fatal if untreated.

Three transplant patients who received organs from an Arkansas man unknowingly infected with rabies died of the disease themselves last month, in the first known case of the lethal virus being passed on through organ transplantation. The donor's organs were removed in Texas and screened for eligibility, then transplanted May 4 into patients at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital and Baylor University Medical Center in Texas. Within weeks, the three recipients of the man's liver and kidneys developed symptoms of rabies - including lethargy, seizures and other neurological problems - and died.

If you come across a brown cube on the ground -- it'll be about the size of an engagement ring box -- leave it be. It is probably a vaccine for the county's raccoons. The Anne Arundel County Health Department distributed more than 81,000 vaccination-laced pellets throughout the Broadneck Peninsula this week. Each cube smells of fish and has the Health Department's phone number stamped on the side. "Rabies is a public health threat," said Elin Jones, a Health Department spokeswoman. "It is a fatal viral infection.

Carroll health officials are warning residents to vaccinate their pets against rabies after a Westminster teen was bitten by a rabid dog last week."If you protect them [the pets], you're protecting yourself," said Charles L. Zeleski, assistant director of the county's Environmental Health Department.The girl, bitten in the hand by a mixed terrier stray the family took in last summer as a puppy, is undergoing treatment for rabies, he said.Treatment is 100 percent effective if started before symptoms appear, Mr. Zeleski said.

Rabies continues to be a health concern in Carroll County, where there have been 12 reported cases this year, county health officials said."We still have an ongoing rabies problem," said Charles Zeleski, the county Health Department's assistant director of environmental health. "We can become complacent if we don't keep in mind the disease is still out there."Mr. Zeleski said 11 of the rabid animals were raccoons and the 12th was a fox.Wild animals are submitted for rabies testing only when they've had some contact with humans or domestic animals, such as dogs, cats, horses or cows.

The best means to control rabies is prevention and county health officials, who have not forgotten the rabies epidemic that swept Harfordfive years ago, are again trying to educate residents that preventive treatment can halt the spread of the disease.John T. Lamb, director of environmental health for the county Health Department, said "The epidemic peaked a few years ago but you have to be concerned about complacency setting in."During 1986, there were 183 laboratory-confirmed cases. The epidemic nearly decimated the county's raccoon population.

In a rare outbreak of rabies in the city, health officials confirmed yesterday at least two recent cases involving infected raccoons, and residents reported a third rabid raccoon in Northeast Baltimore.Dr. Peter Beilenson, city health commissioner, said last night that one of the cases involved a man who raised a raccoon. No other details were immediately available. Reached at home, Jerome Ferguson, chief of the city's division for environmental health, would not comment.Records from the Municipal Animal Shelter show that a rabid raccoon was found March 12 in a residential back yard in tTC Lauraville, behind Morgan State University in Northeast Baltimore.

The Baltimore County Health Department issued a rabies warning yesterday, prompted by an attack by a rabid fox Sunday afternoon on a youth sitting outside his home in the Towson area.Brian Klug, 16, was working on model rockets on his front steps in the 900 block of Metfield Road when he felt a pinch on his back. He thought it was the family Irish setter being playful."I didn't even see it until after it bit me," Brian said. "At first I thought it was our dog, then I realized it really hurt.

Lisa Griffith used to delight at seeing an occasional deer or rabbit, but not any more.Since being attacked Wednesday afternoon by a raccoon in an Owings Mills parking lot, the 30-year-old Anne Arundel County woman fears any wild animal.Mrs. Griffith was walking from her van to a job interview at the Catalyst Research Division of Mine Safety Appliance Co. on Crondall Lane when she felt the sharp pain of tiny razors tearing her right calf. Then she saw that the razors were the teeth of a brown ball of fur."

Worried Anne Arundel health officials say time is running out for the good Samaritans who took a sick cat to a Pasadena veterinarian last week.The cat had rabies, and health officials say the man and two children should be examined immediately for exposure to the fatal disease."