Department of Health delivers rabies vaccinations from the air

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Monday, January 6, 2003 9:26 pm

Department of Health delivers rabies vaccinations from the air

By Elizabeth Pierson

The Monitor



McALLEN — Low-flying planes are skimming the South Texas skies this week, waging war on rabies by dropping packages they hope will trick coyotes into taking a vaccine.

Starting today at sunrise, the Texas Department of Health will begin what has become an annual ritual: dropping 700,000 pungent, fish-wrapped cubes that coyotes can’t resist. When the coyotes bite into the small cube, they puncture a sachet that contains a liquid rabies vaccine.

The coyotes like the taste of the fish bait — and of the vaccine, said Guy Moore, deputy director of the TDH Oral Rabies Program. And the liquid coating in their mouths contains enough vaccine to enter the coyotes’ system and prevent them from contracting rabies.

So far, the drops are working, Moore said. In 1994, there were 166 confirmed rabies cases in coyotes in South Texas, the region where probably more coyotes roam than anywhere else in the United States, Moore said. The TDH, with the help of wildlife groups and the Texas National Guard, began the airdrops that year and, by 2000, they did not find a single rabies case in the region.

A lone South Texas rabies case was confirmed, in a dog, in 2001, but there were none in 2002, according to TDH records.

“It’s very dramatic to see this because of this program,” Moore said. “We are breaking the cycle.”

Moore expects his team will take seven or eight days to drop the bait in designated areas of 14 south Texas counties, including Hidalgo, Cameron, Willacy and Starr counties. His team includes TDH officials, wildlife biologists, members of the Texas National Guard and Dynamic Aviation Group.

Four twin-engine, three-seat planes will scour the counties from sunrise to sunset and will drop 70 baits per square-mile where they think coyotes and stray dogs are most likely to find them. They won’t make the drops in urban areas or places where people live nearby, Moore said.

When TDH started dropping the fish bait nearly a decade ago, they concentrated in areas just south of San Antonio and gradually moved south to the border region.

Now that health and wildlife officials believe South Texas coyotes are virtually rabies-free, their efforts concentrate on a strip roughly 40 miles wide along the Rio Grande in Texas from the Gulf of Mexico to near Del Rio, Moore said. The idea is to keep stray dogs or coyotes from importing the disease across the river into South Texas.

“We’re just maintaining a barrier to make sure we don’t have any rabies cases along the border,” Moore said.

After the South Texas drops, the TDH will do similar drops over west central Texas near Junction and Fort Stockton to immunize gray foxes against rabies, Moore said.

For more information about the drops, visit the TDH Web site at www.tdh.state.tx.us/news/news.htm.



 

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