Researchers believe that vaccinating dogs is the effective way of eliminating rabies.

Governments, communities and health organisations urged to work together to stamp out the disease

Researchers insist that rabies can be eliminated if communities, health organisations and governments work together.

In 2013, a pledge was made by the World Health Organisation (WHO), The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), to eliminate human rabies and control it in animals.

No timescale has been set for an end to the disease globally, however countries in South America are aiming to stamp out human deaths from rabies transmitted from dogs by 2015, and in south-east Asia by 2020.

Dr. Katie Hampson, from the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, believes that vaccinating dogs is the effective way of eradicating rabies.

“If you can vaccinate more than 70 per cent of dogs through sustained campaigns, it is enough to interrupt transmission in the reservoir population so that the disease is eliminated. That is how rabies has been purged from most industrialised countries and why South America is so close to eradicating dog-transmitted rabies from the whole American continent.”

The case for eradicating the disease through dog vaccination is proposed in an article in the journal Science, which is co-written by researchers from the University of Glasgow, Washington State University, Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, and the Global Alliance for Rabies Control.

Over the years, researchers at the University of Glasgow have made significant contributions to the elimination of rabies.

Thanks to Professor Sarah Cleaveland's pioneering research, the university and WHO secured a grant of almost $10 million from the Gates Foundation to tackle rabies in low-income countries.  The money is being used to extend a canine vaccination programme targeting domestic dogs in Tanzania, South Africa and the Phillippines.

Prof. Cleveland's team received an additional grant of more than £600,000 from the Medical Research Council to support epidemiological analysis of data from the Gates/WHO project.

Dr. Hampson says: "Over 50 people are bitten every minute from a rabid dog and many of those in poor countries cannot afford the $100 cost of post-bite treatment. Yet this disease of the nervous system can be eliminated, cost-effectively, if there is a will and efforts are properly coordinated. This hasn't happened to the same scale in developing countries but it can be done, as we have shown through our own research in places like Tanzania.

"Louis Pasteur and Emilie Roux invented a rabies vaccine in 1885 and dreamed of ridding the world of this horrible disease. Nearly 130 years later we have the opportunity to do just that. We should take it."

Image (C) Bryan M. Ilyankoff