Rabies vaccination programme reaches two million dogs

Campaigners leading the fight to eradicate rabies globally say they have reached an “important milestone” after the number of dogs vaccinated against it exceeded two million.

The disease is estimated to kill a child at least every nine minutes and costs the global economy around US$8.6 billion annually.

But officials from Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) and Dogs Trust Worldwide say their work in several key states must continue if the ultimate aim is to be achieved.

‘Fully preventable’

Dogs Trust Worldwide executive director Karen Reed said: “Rabies is a fully preventable disease and our mission takes us around the world to engage communities and deploy rabies vaccination programmes.

“We know that the most effective way to end deaths by rabies is through mass vaccination of dogs.

“We hope that one day we can eliminate rabies, saving countless human and canine lives”.

The success of the vaccination campaign to date has been highlighted to coincide with today’s annual World Rabies Day, which aims to raise broader public awareness of the disease.

Large project

Following the merger of WVS and Dogs Trust announced in May, the two organisations have been working on what they claim is the largest vaccinated project against rabies to date in Cambodia.

They estimate that more than 75,000 dogs were vaccinated during a 10-day period in the country’s capital, Phnom Penh, where it is estimated that one or two children die because of rabies every week.

That scheme has now developed into a wider campaign to protect both children and dogs from the disease, while work has also been taking place in several other countries, including India, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana and Thailand.

More than two million dogs are now believed to have been vaccinated against rabies since the WVS-run Mission Rabies project was launched in 2013, including more than 270,000 treated by Dogs Trust and its partners last year, while six million children have also been educated about its dangers.

Eliminate disease

WVS chief executive Luke Gamble said the initial objective is to secure sufficient vaccination coverage in any single area to eliminate the disease completely.

He added: “Our pledge is to half the number of human rabies deaths in the next five years and protect hundreds of thousands of dogs. We can do this as part of Dogs Trust.

“The key to eliminating rabies is breaking the cycle of transmission by vaccinating 70% of the dogs in any given project site.

“We have to do this for a few years, build up concurrent surveillance and education and then we can create rabies-controlled zones.

“We know it works, there have been no human rabies deaths in Goa for the last five years – a direct result of our Mission Rabies project launched there in 2015 to make Goa the first rabies-controlled state in India.”