The prevalence of rabies, a deadly viral disease affecting mammals, varies significantly across regions worldwide, posing a persistent public health problem.
Almost all human deaths caused by rabies occur in Asia and Africa.
There are an estimated 59,000 human deaths annually from rabies worldwide.[1] However, this data is not substantiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) reports registering numbers of death attributed by rabies, worldwide. Reported numbers often add up to less than 1000 yearly.[2]
Dog licensing, euthanasia of stray dogs, muzzling, and other measures contributed to the elimination of rabies from the United Kingdom in the early 20th century. More recently, large-scale vaccination of cats, dogs and ferrets has been successful in combating rabies in many developed countries, such as Turkey, where pre-exposure vaccinations have been used to combat the prevalence of rabies.[3]
Rabies is a zoonotic disease, caused by the rabies virus. The rabies virus, a member of the Lyssavirus genus of the Rhabdoviridae family, survives in a diverse variety of animal species, including bats, monkeys, raccoons, foxes, skunks, wolves, coyotes, dogs, mongoose, weasels, cats, cattle, domestic farm animals, groundhogs, bears, and wild carnivores. However, dogs are the principal host in Asia, parts of the Americas, and large parts of Africa. Oral vaccines can be safely administered to wild animals through bait, a method initiated on a large scale in Belgium and that has successfully reduced rabies in rural areas of Canada, France, the United States, and elsewhere. For example, in Montreal baits are successfully ingested by raccoons in the Mount Royal park area.