AGONIZING RABIES DEATHS CAN BE STOPPED WORLDWIDE
The deadly rabies
virus--aptly shaped like a bullet-- can be eliminated among humans by stopping
it point-blank among dogs, according to a team of international researchers led
by the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health at Washington State
University.
Ridding the world of
rabies is cost-effective and achievable through mass dog vaccination programs,
the scientists report in a paper that appears in the Sept. 26 issue of Science magazine.
What's more, they write, because infections occur as a result of interactions
between animals and people, a "One Health" approach is necessary,
where veterinary, medical and public health professionals collaborate to
eliminate the disease worldwide.
Publication of the
article, "Implementing Pasteur's vision for rabies elimination"
coincides with the 119th anniversary of French scientist's Louis Pasteur's
death and a global campaign to wrench an ancient disease in the shadows to the
forefront.
A rabies vaccine has
long existed, developed by Pasteur in 1885. Even so, the disease kills an
estimated 69,000 people worldwide -- that's 189 each day. Forty percent of them
are children, mostly in Africa and Asia. The disease is spread primarily
through the saliva of infected dogs. Once a person develops symptoms, the
chance that he or she will die is nearly 100-percent.
"The irony is
that rabies is 100 percent preventable. People shouldn't be dying at all,"
said veterinary infectious disease expert Guy Palmer, who directs WSU's Allen
School and is co-author of the paper.
The disease persists,
partly due to political complacency but also because of a lack of international
commitment, researchers state in the article. And yet, eliminating it
"meets all the criteria for a global health priority: It is
epidemiologically and logistically feasible, cost-effective and socially
equitable," they conclude.
The authors cite the
success of mass dog vaccination clinics held in the East African country of
Tanzania. Working in 180 villages, members of the Allen School and the
Serengeti Health Initiative vaccinate as many as 1,000 dogs in a single day.
Since the program began in 2003, the number of people killed by rabies has
dropped from an average of 50 each year to almost zero, according to Allen
School researcher Felix Lankester, based in East Africa, who is the paper's
lead author. Vaccinating 70-percent of the dogs in the region broke the route
of transmission from dogs to humans, he explained.
Though human rabies is
rarely seen in developed nations that conduct mass dog vaccination programs,
the disease should be viewed as a global public health problem that can be
solved, writes Lankester, Palmer and co-authors from the Nelson Mandela African
Institution of Science and Technology, the University of Glasgow in Scotland
and the Global Alliance for Rabies Control.
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