Border Outbreak

More than 30 people in California's Imperial County were bitten last week by dogs, many of which were certainly rabid.

At least 100 county residents were taking or had recently finished the tedious "Pasteur treatment"*--a series of 14 to 21 painful daily injections. Since Labor Day, 1,388 animals (mostly dogs, but including 187 cats) had been shot (more than 200 last week) on the suspicion that any animal at large might be rabid. That the suspicion was justified was shown in a check of 48 stray dogs picked up at Calexico in four days: 29 proved rabid.

Rabies is a disease that demands superlatives. Once it develops, it is invariably fatal. But it is completely preventable. The World Health Organization reported last week that Norway has had no case in animal or man since 1809, Australia since 1867, Britain since 1922. In 1959, the U.S. had five deaths through November. Prevention requires two rigorous steps: destruction of every rabid animal, followed by strict quarantine to keep the disease out. (Vaccination of pets is a valuable added precaution.)

Shoot at Sight. Imperial County's problem is that, although its antirabies precautions have long matched the U.S. average, it faces an abnormal hazard--an estimated 25,000 stray dogs across the border in Mexicali (pop. 175,000), capital of Baja California Norte, Mexico's newest state. An eight-mile fence, 8-ft. high, between Calexico and Mexicali, does not keep the beasts out, mainly because they trot through the border control post alongside cars.

The current border-jumping epidemic began Labor Day, when one rabid dog bit a man and a child. It built up gradually. Imperial County was quarantined and declared a rabies area in early November.

Any animal not on a leash became fair game. First day, 40 dogs and 20 cats were shot. "They've gone crazy," complained one man. "My wife hollered, 'Don't shoot!' but they shot my Labrador retriever four times with a shotgun, right in front of the kids. And he had a tag on." Unsentimental health officers literally stuck to their guns.

Heads in the Reefer. Dozens of dogs have been proved rabid, and in the county health department's refrigerator at El Centro there is a big backlog of heads from destroyed animals. Microbiologist Ella Capers Weston has not had time to check them all, has sent an overflow to state laboratories in Berkeley. At least 15 people have been bitten by dogs now known to have been rabid; scores of others have had to take the vaccine injections before the biters' rabidity could be established. Microbiologist Weston has taken them too.

In Calexico, a door-to-door check was in progress to make sure that every dog or cat was vaccinated against rabies. In Mexicali. health officers opened vaccination clinics for dogs, got 5.000 vaccine doses from the Pan American Health Organization. It looked like too little, too late; more than 600 residents had been bitten, of whom 425 had taken shots. Casualty reports were feared daily. Even the intensive efforts north of the border mir;ht not be enough. Said Calexico's City Health Officer Al Brooks: ''If we get by without a few people dying from rabies, it will be a miracle."

* Still usually so-called because Louis Pasteur made the first vaccine from the ground-up spinal cords of rabbits in which the virus had grown and become weakened. But most vaccine now used in the U.S. is the Semple type (for David Semple, English physician, 1856-1937), in which the virus is killed by heat and chemicals.

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