Optimising rabies vaccination of dogs in India

Dog vaccination is the key to controlling rabies in human populations. However, in countries like India, with large free-roaming dog populations, vaccination strategies that rely only on parenteral vaccines are unlikely to be either feasible or successful. Oral rabies vaccines could be used to reach...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Epidemiology and infection 2023-08, Vol.151, p.e164-e164, Article e164
Main Authors: Cuddington, Kim, McAuliffe, William H. B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Baits
Bats
Cost analysis
Cost control
Cost estimates
Dogs
Human populations
Immunization
Linear programming
Optimization
Original Paper
Populations
Rabies
Teams
Tropical diseases
Vaccines
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Dog vaccination is the key to controlling rabies in human populations. However, in countries like India, with large free-roaming dog populations, vaccination strategies that rely only on parenteral vaccines are unlikely to be either feasible or successful. Oral rabies vaccines could be used to reach these dogs. We use cost estimates for an Indian city and linear optimisation to find the most cost-effective vaccination strategies. We show that an oral bait handout method for dogs that are never confined can reduce the per dog costs of vaccination and increase vaccine coverage. This finding holds even when baits cost up to 10x the price of parenteral vaccines, if there is a large dog population or proportion of dogs that are never confined. We suggest that oral rabies vaccine baits will be part of the most cost-effective strategies to eliminate human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030.
ISSN:0950-2688
1469-4409
DOI:10.1017/S0950268823001334