At about 7:30 pm on June 29, a 79-year-old woman, residing in Dai Xuyen commune (Hanoi), was suddenly attacked by a neighbor's dog while going out to open the gate. The animal bit her face and right arm many times, even dragged her a distance before being stopped by everyone.
On the same night, the patient was taken to Bach Mai Hospital, Ninh Binh branch, in a condition with many deep wounds in the face and right arm, and some locations with severe tissue loss.
After receiving the patient, doctors urgently stopped the bleeding, treated the wound and activated an online consultation between the General Surgery specialist at Ninh Binh facility and doctors from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Bach Mai Hospital.
Through evaluation, doctors determined that this is a type III wound - the most severe level in the rabies exposure classification, with penetrating lesions in the head and face. Patients need to be vaccinated against rabies in combination with rabies-resistant serum (RIG) as soon as possible, especially within the first 24 hours. Serum helps create passive immunity right at the wound site, contributing to neutralizing the virus before it enters the nervous system.
According to family members, the dog showed unusual ferocity but was sold by the owner immediately after biting someone, disrupting the monitoring according to preventive medicine recommendations. Doctors have instructed the family to contact the owner to verify the animal's condition, serve risk assessment and develop a suitable post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).
BSNT Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, in charge of the Vaccine Counseling and Vaccination Unit, Bach Mai Institute of Tropical Medicine, said that rabies has a mortality rate of nearly 100% when clinical symptoms appear and there is currently no specific treatment. Therefore, vaccination and rabies serum are the only measures to prevent the disease. To achieve the highest efficiency, wound treatment and preventive vaccination should be carried out as soon as possible, ideally within the first 24 hours after being bitten or scratched by an animal.
At that time, the vaccination room of Ninh Binh facility was not complete, while transferring patients to other facilities faced many difficulties due to old age and severe injuries. After consultation, under the direction of the Board of Directors of Bach Mai Hospital, a plan to coordinate rabies vaccine and serum from Hanoi to Ninh Binh was implemented immediately that night.
According to Dr. Doan Thu Tra, Acting Director of Bach Mai Institute of Tropical Medicine, this is a race against time to ensure that patients are treated during "golden hours". Immediately after that, the team of the Vaccine Counseling and Vaccination Unit at the Hanoi facility quickly prepared anti-rabbit serum, rabies vaccine and tetanus vaccine, kept them in accordance with procedures and transported them overnight to Ninh Binh.
Thanks to the urgent coordination between the two facilities, patients were fully vaccinated and given serum at the right time, continued to be monitored and scheduled for the next doses according to professional instructions. Currently, the patient's health and spirit have stabilized.
