No. of Recommendations: 1
No. There's no effective way to test for rabies on a live animal.
In the Philippines you run into the problem that you've been bitten by an animal and it's gone, so you have to get treated, which is a series of shots. But you have a short period of time to get those shots - like 3-5 days per memory. Need to check again. :) If you get bitten during a typhoon it can be more than 5 days till you get near the shots, so, if prudent, you get two precursor shots that extend the period to 10-14 DAYS IIRC. So I got those because one of the problem is that by the time you show symptoms, you are dead, no cure - you have to be lucky.
In discussions everyone seemed to be aware of expats dying from rabies, and in one case a Swedish lady returned home and died. She wasn't aware and had played with a dog. About a third of the US cases are from people returning from overseas. We do now have a problem with raccoons in the North East. So that may have triggered it, who knows?
I got bit and went down. I had to buy three shots of something in the drug store across from the hospital, but I only needed one shot from the vial. By the time I got back, a skinny old man was there and got one of the shots for free. Someone else was on the way. :)
