Rabies alarms health

officials, communities

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, Feb 10 (PIA) –The rising rabies cases in humans, alarm health authorities who believe drastic measures should be put in place immediately to keep the fatal canine viral disease at bay.

By drastic measures, it means a revisit and community ownership of the Bohol Rabies Prevention and Eradication Program, a rigid information and education campaign on responsible pet ownership and government subsidies on the purchase of anti-rabies vaccines for both humans and animals.

This as Bohol reports 12 suspected deaths due to rabies and 16.5% of biting dog head samples sent for rabies confirmation resulted in them being positive.

According to animal rabies monitoring head and Provincial veterinarian Dr. Stella Marie Lapiz, 14 dog head samples of involved in the 85 biting incidents tested positive for rabies.

In fact, Provincial Health Office through nurse and provincial health and lifestyle coordinator Leonidas Saniel reports that animal bites make up the second in the rates of disease among the 2020 population while third in 2021 morbidity rate.

According to PHO Rabies in Humans coordinator nurse Polizena Rances, their monitoring records some 17,331 recorded animal bites in 2020, and about 90% of these are dog bites.

By 2021, they recorded 17,415 cases of animal bites.

And in 2022, up to the third quarter, PHOP gathered 16,425 animal bite cases, these are as far as the victims go to the 16 animal bite treatment centers (ABTC) spread all over Bohol.

The problem is even made more complicated by that fact that out of poor information, bite victims would rather go to quack doctors than seek immediate medical treatment at the registered animal bite centers.

Moreover, ABTCs also report that a good percentage of bite victims fail to continue the treatment after the initial doses.

Disease is a viral dog disease than can be passed on a human through the animal’s virus-laden saliva or blood that can get into a human body through open wounds like bites and scratches.

“After infection, the virus travels from the bite area to the brain, and in this period, the victim must be given the proper treatment to stop the virus from getting to the brain, when the disease becomes almost always fatal,” says Rances.

After the biting incident, the victim has to immediately wash the wound with soap and water and head directly to the ABTC where he can get the proper assessment and get instructions on the management of the wound and his first anti-rabies injection.

The national rabies low mandates the biting animal owners to immediately submit the biting animal for observation within 24 hours, and spend for whatever costs the biting victim incurs in the line of treatment and accessing it.

If within the next few days, the biting animal shows the symptoms of rabies in animals, the suspected animal’s head would be harvested for confirmatory analysis in Manila.

Depending on the gravity of the bite and its location, the patient may need succeeding booster doses of the anti-rabies injections: after day 3, after day 7 and after day 24.

In the past, an ordinance in Bohol mandates that dog owners, along with the national, provincial and municipal governments contribute for the bite injections, to make sure that a patient gets the proper treatment.

On the other hand, authorities at the Provincial veterinarians Office call on dog owners to be responsible in making sure their dogs are registered, vaccinated and kept under their effective control.

The national law and the provincial ordinance on rabies states that any dog which is not in effective control of the owner, when caught as stray, penalizes the owners.

The vet authorities also said that if owners are incapable of having many pets, they have spaying and neutering operations to render these animals infertile, so that dog population could also be controlled. (PIA-7/Bohol)

EVERYBODY’S CONCERN. Contrary to popular belief that rabies control rests only on the hands of the veterinarians, DR Stella Marie Lapiz says at 200,000 dogs in Bohol, most of them technically stray, there is no way the authorities can get to each one. But if owners are responsible enough to keep their dogs properly, see to it that these have been vaccinated, controlled and cared upon, Bohol can give rabies a final nasty bite. (PIAbohol)

Baclayon ‘museum artifacts’

Need immediate restoration

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, Feb 10 (PIA) –The race is on to safeguard and safe-keep the priceless historical artifacts, works of liturgical arts, religious vessels, artifacts, vestments, sacred icons and archival records that have been soaked and possibly damaged by the typhoon Odette which peeled off the church and convent roofs and drenched the museum pieces and its inventory of equally rare immovable treasures.

Assistant museum administrator of the Parrochial Museum of the Immaculate conception in Baclayon, Athena G. Vitor said while museum pieces can degrade over time, the task is to delay as much of the damage through proper restoration and curation and to salvage what can be done to prolong the life of the object so that people who wish to see them can still do so.

However, the drenching rains during the storm and the subsequent drastic climate changes in the museum and its repository areas have hastened the damage, that measures have to be done to save these priceless objects that the museum keeps, she stressed.

The museum in Baclayon however has barely enough money to run its daily operations, that sourcing out the funds for the restoration of these priceless objects may incur, is beyond the capacity of the museum and the diocese of Tagbilaran, she added.

Speaking at Piskay ni Bai, a new online talk show of the Philippine Information Agency in Bohol, Vitor said they are still carefully assessing the state of these objects so they can recommend the priorities for restoration, considering the costs and the degree of work to be done on an object.

During the show, Vitor showed the quaint wooden tabernacle with baroque motif and shows the flaking of possibly gold-leaf materials showing out the gesso primary coating.

While the urna-like 18th century tabernacle has flanking carved double solomonic columns, with flaking but majority of the gold paint still in, with and royal red Chinese-styled paintings, shows an already apparent dullness in the gold, one thing she points out as an after effect of the post-typhoon damage.

The same tabernacle still shows a rare and outstanding reverse painting, which is a skill perfected by the Chinese in the 1th century onwards, and the insides of the sagrario are well preserved paintings

The vice administrator of probably Bohol’s oldest running museum which has been opened for at least half a century, also pointed out that aside from the rare tabernacle, also needing immediate restoration and care are outstanding pieces like the Liberato Gatchalian paintings on canvas, the Misa Cantoral of mass songbooks with neumes written on a standard musical notation on stretched goat skin and bound in leather, and an interesting ramillete that has local fibers topped with a purple silken cloth and equally interesting cut lagang (nautilus shells) adornments.

A Gatchalian painting on wood planks placed at the inner side of the church entrance used up some P5 million in restoration fees in the late 1990s.

Closed after the earthquake in 2013, the newly revamped museum was set to be reopened in 2021, but the typhoon disrupted the schedule, only to be reset to its public reopening last October 15, 2022.

For this opening the gallery exhibit was curated by The University of Santo Tomas Center for Conservation of Cultural Property and environment in the Tropics through Director Eric Zerrudo, with Boholano chair of the Cathoklic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Commission on Cultural heritage of the Church, Fr Milan Ted Torralba.

The Parroquial Museum in Baclayon, although collecting a standard donation has the funds going to conservation of the collection, to put up the security measures in place and to regulate the crowd as the museum simply can not accommodate everyone at a single time in the gallery.

Vitor also quickly added that a museum is not a profit permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage.

Museums are primarily educational and non-profit, but the cost of keeping these objects for public viewing alone, is hurting the museum sustainability, she hinted.

Other than the most immediate need for conservation of the rare museum objects in its collection, the space limitaiions in the museum for the development of additional galleries rise as a challenge. (RAHC/PIA-7/Bohol)

CONSERVING THE RARE CANTORALS. An old music in the Gregorian chanting tradition with neumes as notes but written on a standard staff notation is not only what makes the Baclayon Cantoral rare. The fact that it is composed for Baclayon, the cantoral for Misa Baclayana is written on stretched goat skin and bound in animal hide, which makes it even more interesting. (PIA-Bohol)

NOLI ME TANGERE. The flaking gold leaf and the chipping gesso could further be damaged by touching, as some of the damage of the 18thcentury golden tabernacle exhibited at the Baclayon museum gallery shows. The tabernacle also has a rare glass reverse painting, which may be a lost skill now. These needs immediate restoration and conservation to arrest the spreading damage caused by the drenching rain when the museum roof peeled off exposing the rare museum collection to rain and other natural elements. (PIABohol)