Human rabies post-exposure prophylaxis: a review of the treatment of accidents involving domestic cats

Lourdes Araújo, Isabelade Assis Lopes Frankó, MarianaMendonça de Oliveira, TiagoAraújo Diniz, SoraiaXavier Silva, Marcos

Rabies is an anthropozoonosis that presents approximately 100% lethality and expensive preventive assistance. Many human post-exposure anti-rabies treatments indicated for people at risk of exposure to rabies virus, usually due to some aggression by a mammalian animal, are instituted annually. This study aimed to evaluate the initial care of post-exposure prophylaxis of human rabies in Belo Horizonte between 2007 and 2016, involving accidents with domestic cats. It was found 71.1% agreement between the treatments instituted by health services and the protocol of the Ministry of Health. Treatments classified as insufficient totaled 18.3% and excessive, 10.6%. The animals were healthy in 68% and observable in 68.4% of the cases. Treatments involving the use of anti-rabies vaccine totaled 87.7%. The most frequent treatment adopted by the health services was observing the animals associated with the human anti-rabies vaccination in 56.7% of the cases. Imperfections in the filling of the notifications must be revised to enable improvements for future analyses. As for human prophylactic anti-rabies care, forming a multidisciplinary health team including veterinarians would be well on the way to improving the service offered.