Abuja, 27 September, 2019 - On 28 September every year, Nigeria joins the world to raise awareness about dog mediated human rabies and highlight progress made in defeating the disease. This year’s theme ‘Rabies: Vaccinate to Eliminate’, focuses on ‘vaccination as the foundation of all rabies control efforts’ and highlights the need at individual and community level to ensure that dog vaccination should be considered a routine activity.

Rabies is one of the neglected tropical vaccine-preventable diseases and predominantly affects poor and vulnerable populations who live in remote rural locations. Vaccinating dogs is the most cost-effective strategy for preventing rabies in people. Dog vaccination reduces deaths attributable to rabies and the need for post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) as a part of dog bite patient care.

In Nigeria, approximately 55 000 people die each year from human rabies with rabid dogs accounting for about 94% of confirmed human infection. An estimated 10 million people receive PEP each year after being exposed to animals with suspected rabies.

“While rabies can affect both domestic and wild animals, domestic dogs are responsible for up to 99% rabies virus transmission to humans. It is spread to people through bites or scratches, usually via saliva”, says Dr Anyaike Chukwuma, of the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Unit,  
Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH). 

“Although effective human vaccines exist for rabies, they are not readily available or accessible to those in need”, he added 
Globally, rabies deaths are rarely reported and children between the ages of 05–14 years are frequent victims. Treating a rabies exposure, where the average cost of rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) is roughly US$ 40 can be a catastrophic financial burden on affected families whose average daily income is around US$ 1–2 per person.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the FMoH has identified the menace caused by the disease. In line with this, WHO reaffirms their support towards generation of data to monitor trend of disease and support in creating awareness for rabies prevention and dog vaccination. 

“As a priority NTD, guidelines for rabies have been developed and disseminated to communities.  Training for the use of the guidelines has been conducted for at least 500 health workers”, says Dr Lynda Ozor, focal person of Communicable and Non communicable diseases (CND) cluster, WHO.

“While these are ongoing, it’s necessary to ensure availability of cost effective vaccines that will be able to reach the right people at right time and condition when needed”, she reiterated.