KUCHING: An unnatural stillness has descended on Kampung Paon Sungai Rimu Bakung, two weeks after the Bidayuh village in Serian district was declared rabies-infected.
Dogs used to wander about and accompany their owners to the farm. Now, the only canines to be seen are on a rabies awareness banner put up at the entrance to the village.
Located 95km from Kuching, Kampung Paon Sungai Rimu Bakung is ground zero of the rabies outbreak in Serian.
It was one of five villages to be declared rabies-infected by the state government on July 4, the day two young siblings from the village succumbed to the disease.
According to villagers, dogs that got sick or showed signs of the disease have either died or were put down. The remaining dogs have been vaccinated and kept caged out of sight as part of measures to contain the spread of the disease.
Keeping dogs is an essential part of the villagers’ life.
“Every family has dogs for guarding the house and going to the farm. Sometimes the dogs are brought along on hunting trips,” pepper farmer Gabriel Bihon said.
His dog died at the end of May, a couple of days after it got into a fight with another villager’s dog, which Gabriel suspected had turned rabid.
But he believed that the infection originated across the border and could have been spread by dogs belonging to Indonesian workers at a nearby plantation.
“The Kalimantan border is not far from here, less than an hour’s drive on a dirt road.
“The source (of the infection) has to be Indonesia because a friend told me there were already rabies cases there before it appeared here,” he said.
He recalled that a few months earlier, a villager’s dog wandered into the plantation and fought with a dog there.
“After that, the dog came back and fought with other dogs in the village, so the village dogs also became sick,” he added.
A third victim from Kampung Lebur died last Thursday and the fourth, from Kampung Ampungan, on Monday.
Two more villages were declared rabies-infected on July 12 and 13.
Containment measures, including active case detection and mass vaccination of animals, are being taken within a 10km radius of ground zero.
While villagers are concerned about the situation, there is no sign of panic as they carry on with their daily routine, tending farms and drying pepper berries in the sun.
Housewife Apholina Benedict said the people of Kampung Paon Sungai Rimu Bakung were shocked to hear that the siblings from their village had contracted rabies as there had never been any cases before.
“At first, we thought maybe the children had leptospirosis because they used to bathe in the small river behind their house,” she said.
The children tested negative for leptospirosis and Japanese encephalitis, but a rabies test came up positive.
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