Increasing rabies data availability: The example of a One Health research project in Chad, Côte d'Ivoire and Mali.

Estimation of dog population and dog bite risk factors in departments of San Pedro and Bouake in Côte d'Ivoire

Rabies is an ancient yet still neglected tropical disease (NTD). This review focuses upon highlights of recent research and peer-reviewed communications on the underestimated tropical burden of disease and its management due to the complicated dynamics of virulent viral species, diverse mammalian reservoirs, and tens of millions of exposed humans and animals – and how laboratory-based surveillance at each level informs upon pathogen spread and risks of transmission, for targeted prevention and control. While both human and rabies animal cases in enzootic areas over the past 5 years were reported to PAHO/WHO and OIE by member countries, still there is a huge gap between these “official” data and the need for enhanced surveillance efforts to meet global program goals. A review of the complex aspects of rabies perpetuation in human, domestic animal, and wildlife communities, coupled with a high fatality rate despite the existence of efficacious biologics (but no therapeutics), warrants the need for a One Health approach toward detection via improved laboratory-based surveillance, with focal management at the viral source. More effective methods to prevent the spread of rabies from enzootic to free zones are needed. 

Rabies in the Tropics

Rabies surveillance-response in Mali in the past 18 years and requirements for the future

Almost half of all countries in the world are effectively free of human deaths from dog-mediated rabies. But the disease still affects people in low- and middle-income countries, especially the rural poor, and children. Successful regional elimination of human rabies is attributable to advances in significant and sustained investment in dog vaccination, post-exposure vaccination and surveillance, illustrated by productive efforts to reduce human rabies in Latin America over the last 35 years. Nonetheless, countries still facing endemic rabies face significant barriers to elimination. Using the 2017 Global Strategic Plan to end human rabies deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030 as a reference point and an organizing framework, we assess progress toward global rabies elimination by examining the characteristics of successful regional control efforts and barriers to elimination. Although substantive barriers exist for countries where rabies remains endemic, advances in knowledge, technology, institutions, and economics provide a basis for optimism.

Zakaria Keita

Papers

Burden of rabies in Mali

Rabies surveillance-response in Mali in the past 18 years and requirements for the future

Rabies burden in Côte d'Ivoire.

From reverse innovation to global innovation in animal health: A review