This stray dog from Bali has a red collar, indicating that he has been vaccinated against rabies (Photo: Getty)
Wednesday was World Rabies Day, not that you’d have known it from the complete lack of coverage in the British media. Although rabies still kills 55,000 people a year, it’s one of those “foreign” illnesses that doesn’t seem relevant to UK residents. The United Kingdom has been rabies free for over a century: the last case of classical rabies acquired in this country was in 1902. The occasional cases occurring since then have all been in humans who’ve been abroad, usually through dog bites.
The global difficulty in controlling rabies relates to the fact that animals are infectious for a period before they start to show signs, so that they can spread the disease when they still look utterly normal. It’s only as the disease advances that the animals show obvious signs of being unwell. If apparently normal dogs spread the disease, how can it be stopped?
This is a major public health concern in many countries. Six people have died of rabies in Shanghai so far this year. Two thousand humans die of rabies every year in Bangladesh; twenty thousand die annually in India. Can you imagine the panic in this country if even a fraction of these statistics were to be replicated here?
Traditionally, governments have attempted to control rabies by kneejerk reactions in the face of outbreaks, sending out death squads to shoot or poison all dogs in an area. Around twenty million dogs are killed every year in this way, yet still, rabies continues to thrive.
The World Society for the Protection of Animals is promoting an alternative global approach: mass vaccination of dogs in countries where rabies is endemic. Vaccinated dogs are given a red collar, so that they can easily be identified as “safe” animals. Last year, WSPA funded Bali’s first island-wide mass vaccination programme, including 210,000 dogs. In the first six months, the project saw a decrease of over 45 per cent in cases of canine rabies, and a reduction of 48 per cent in rabies related human deaths in comparison to the same period in the previous year. WSPA is now working with several governments across the world to implement similar models.
What about the situation in the UK? The UK’s rabies free status has been maintained for most of the past century by a strict policy of quarantining all imported dogs and cats for six months. In the past decade, this has been relaxed, in response to a double pressure, first to ease European border controls and second, to make it easier for owners to travel internationally with their pets.
Pet passports have been issued to dogs and cats that have been microchipped for identification, vaccinated against rabies, then blood tested to ensure that they have responded adequately to vaccination. A six months delay had to pass after this blood test, before import, to allow for that tiny proportion of animals that could be incubating the disease at the time of their vaccine. This system has run for a decade and has been widely judged to be safe and effective.
But the UK border controls to European countries will be eased further from the start of 2012: the post-vaccine blood test and six month delay will no longer be needed. This has been welcomed in some quarters (it makes travel to Europe easier and cheaper for British dog owners) but others have expressed concern. The barrier to rabies entering the UK will be lowered further.
If rabies ever does reach these shores again, how effectively will our government veterinary services (currently being “rationalised”) be able to respond to the crisis? If rabies enters the British wildlife ecosystem, will it ever be possible to eradicate it? Or will we need to take the approach taken by most other European countries and North America: compulsory vaccination of all pets against rabies?
Perhaps one day those WSPA red collars will become a common sight on British streets too.
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