CARMEL – The Putnam County Health Department is sponsoring a free rabies vaccination clinic Saturday at the upper Putnam Veterans Memorial Park off Gipsy Trail Road in Kent when residents of the county’s six towns and three villages can bring their dogs, cats and ferrets for an inoculation.
Marianne Burdick, associate public health sanitarian, who supervises the rabies control program, reported “any mammal can get rabies, but it occurs more frequently in some species than others. Animals are sent for rabies testing when an investigation determines there is risk of rabies exposure in a person or domestic animal.”
Cats and dogs make up 25 percent of the animals that require testing for rabies in Putnam due to contact with a human.
Burdick added: “Most of these involved exposures to abandoned feral cats, which live and reproduce in the wild. Bats, however, account for nearly all other potential exposures for people in Putnam, close to 75 percent.”
Burdick explained cat and dog exposures tend to occur year-round while encounters with bats increase in spring and summer when bats are most active. “Last summer, the need for bat testing began rising in April and peaked in the months from July through September. During these three summer months, 28 bats were captured after potential human contact, accounting for more than half the year’s total. Despite higher numbers in the spring and summer, it is important to realize that bat encounters happen year-round,” she said.
Raccoons, skunks, and foxes have also tested positive in Putnam County for rabies.
Putnam’s increasing feral cat population has resulted in the health department’s involvement in a Trap-Neuter-Release program. Burdick said the concept was a “humane and effective approach to care for feral and stray cats, a practice that has decades of success behind it. The cats are captured, neutered and released after being vaccinated against rabies. Scientific studies show the program improves the lives of feral cats and their relationships with people who live near them. It also decreases the size of feral cat colonies and the potential for human rabies exposure.”
Anyone bitten by an animal or those having contact with wild animals is urged to call the health department at 845- 808-1390; after office hours or on weekends and holidays to call the number and press “3” for an environmental hotline. Health department personnel will return the call.
Saturday’s clinic will be held from 10 a.m. to 12-noon.
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