Killer disease rabies being neglected in Africa

Lerato Mbangeni

JOHANNESBURG: At least one person will die from rabies every 10 minutes – and it’s likely to be a child.

The person is most likely to be from Asia, but statistics put Africa in second place.

This is according to the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (Garc), one of the organisations raising awareness of the disease on World Rabies Day, which was yesterday. Ashok Moloo of the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the disease is dangerous.

“Rabies mainly affects the rural poor and marginalised populations (and) continues to kill tens of thousands of people every year. Almost 40 percent of the victims exposed to dog bites are children under the age of 15.”

The WHO and Garc, along with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN and the World Organisation for Animal Health, have united to urge countries to invest in eliminating rabies.

Dr Bernadette Abela-Ridder, the team leader of Neglected Zoonotic Diseases at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, said: “Rabies is preventable at its source by vaccinating dogs.

“Decline in human rabies deaths closely mirrors that of rabies in dogs, and investments are needed now to roll out elimination programmes in affected communities and countries.”

Rabies experts who make up the Pan-African Rabies Control Network met in Gauteng in June to try co-ordinate rabies elimination strategies.

The public health and veterinary experts from 34 countries urged their governments to take action. It is estimated that 21 500 people in Africa die from rabies every year.

Professor Louis Nel, the executive director of Garc, said: “Rabies is a neglected disease across all of Africa, and the continent suffers the highest per capita rate of human rabies deaths in the world.

“The tragedy is that each of these deaths is unnecessary and could have been avoided.

“We have all the tools and evidence that dog rabies can be controlled and eliminated and that human rabies can be prevented.”