Daily Times

PESHAWAR: A new research study has revealed that every rat does not possess rabies infection as it depends on its geographical location where it can possess the virus and infect the people.

Muhammad Adnan who did his PhD from the United Kingdom (UK) and is currently serving as a lecturer at the department of Zoology in the University of Peshawar claimed in his experiments that rat biting has different consequences in different regions.

Rat bite has created great fuss among the masses of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) which was followed by the provincial government campaign against the rat aimed at the controlling the fear of the rabies trough the spread of rat bites.

The issue also took a political turn when the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa announced head money over rats.

Around 400 cases of rat bites were registered this year at Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar. Among them were 174 children, 128 males and 72 females.

Talking to Daily Times Dr. Muhammad Adnan said that looking into the literature on rat bites across the globe tells us that rat bites and related diseases may not cause the same infection as in Europe.

He said that the experiment that he carried out postulates about a number of potential diseases but It in no way signifies or points to the fact that the rats of Peshawar may carry these unless confirmed scientifically. Rat biting has different impacts associated with the geographical variation.

“It does not mean that the rats in the USA and the rats in Asia possessed identical diseases and its bite posed the same threat, even within the United states the rate of carrying the disease may vary among different regions” he added.

He shared with this scribe that the rats of different localities like the percentage of rats carrying Hepatitis E in Karachi would be different to that of rats in Peshawar.

Mr Adnan said that the concept that the bite of a rat causes death or any other critical repercussions is a premature scientific statement at this point of time.

He further said that the issue of rat bites and its related rumours look political instead of scientific and sometimes it carries materials of fun for the public.

He said that it had become a common practice unlike the Western nations that people do judge the issue with the spectacles of scientific approach.

“Historically a rat is associated with black plague but when a rat catches plague it dies and the plague epidemic was thought to have been caused by the flea that jumped from the rats to humans,” experiments of the statement said.

“The research finds that the rat bite fever, a rare disease, happens because of two different microorganisms thought to be in the natural nasal and oral flora of rats,” he explained.

He pinpointed that transmission occurs through contact with the urine, saliva or secretions from the eyes or nose of the infected animal. The most common form of transmission is through bites. There can be other ways of transmission like it can be transmitted to animals (cats and dogs) that preyed on an infected rat and in turn transmitted the infection to humans.

About rabies and rat bites Adnan said that the available literature shows that not a single case of rabies has been caused by rats or other small rodents in the United States.

However, he said in Thailand four per cent and in Norway rats are found to be carrying rabies although such studies in Sri Lanka, Poland and Bangkok showed no rats infected with rabies.

Looking into human cases of rabies a study in Poland shows that out of the 9998 cases of human rabies only four were thought to have been caused by rat bites, in Thailand out of 7000 human rabies cases annually one per cent are caused by rat bites.

He argued that although these days the public sector hospitals of Peshawar don’t vaccinate rat bite victims with the anti-rabies vaccine, his personal preference would be vaccination in such an unfortunate scenario.

He stressed that we need to carry out our own research instead of generalisations on something we don’t know exactly about.