I am currently in Public Health exploration which mainly confusing on rabies. In Cambodia, rabies mostly comes from dogs and cats. As the research showed, there are around 5 million dogs in Cambodia and about 50% of those contain rabies virus. This means that if you got bitten by a dog you will have a 50% chance of getting rabies. Most importantly, the deaths from rabies in Cambodia are greater than dengue fever and malaria combined. Even though rabies is one of the health issues in our country, not many people know about it and not many people taking action to stop it from spreading.
To prevent rabies from expanding, our exploration had collaborated with an organization called, “Phnom Penh Animal Welfare Society (PPAWS)” and held an event at Mondulkiri. The two main focuses of the event are trying to get many dogs/cats as possible to receive vaccination and dissecting. Besides focusing on the animals, we were also trying to get people to know more about rabies and the awarenesses. In order to achieve this goal, our group had divided into many small teams to walk around the area and telling the villagers and remind them to get their dogs/cats vaccinated and if they want they can do dissecting.
I was so glad that I was on this trip because there are so many incredible things that I have never seen before. One of those things is looking at the whole process of dissecting the animals as well as giving the animal’s vaccine. Although it was scary to see the surgery, I manage to do it because I think it was a good opportunity where not many get to see something cool like this.
