BHARATI PAWASKAR
Bitten by an unknown stray dog little Sabina was taken to hospital in time and tested if she would contract rabies. However, she recovered soon and did not develop rabies. “Thankfully, this dog on the road was already vaccinated against rabies by Mission Rabies Goa team, which saved my child’s life,” states Sabina’s mother Nilanjana. But not many Sabinas are lucky. Many of them die of rabies and in India 20,000 people die of rabies each year.
Rabies, indeed, a dreaded disease that injects a scare of death into the minds of those bitten by animals, especially dogs. This viral disease causes inflammation of the brain in humans and other mammals. Contracted mostly by stray dogs, rabies is 100 per cent preventable through vaccination. However, once symptoms develop there is no cure. And in India, 20,000 people die from rabies every year in spite of the availability of safe and efficacious animal and human vaccines which prove to be one of the important tools that exist to eliminate human deaths from rabies.
One must consider that awareness is the key driver for success of communities to engage in effective rabies prevention. Engaged in spreading awareness in schools, vaccination for the dogs, offering testing facilities, advising on precautions to be taken while dealing with dogs and what to do next if bitten, ‘Mission Rabies Goa’ is working in the state since September 2013. Launching in September 2013 the team began pilot vaccination campaign for 5000 dogs vaccinated against rabies. Funded by the UK charity - Dogs Trust, Mission Rabies sterlised and vaccinated 20,000 dogs across Goa. In 2015 between January-August, vaccination teams worked in areas where low sterlisation coverage had been achieved and 20,000 another vaccinations were administered.
Impressed by the commendable job done by the team, the Government of Goa decided to extend its support to Mission Rabies. Dogs Trust Worldwide and MSD Animal Health too joined hands with the team. As Julie Corfmat, project manager at Mission Rabies Goa, recalls, “In September 2015, the government of Goa started supporting us and it enabled us to put in to place a state wide mass vaccination campaign. In 2017, we vaccinated 97,000 dogs across Goa and last year it was over 100,000. This year to date, it is more than 60,000 dogs whom we have vaccinated.”
Today, Julie shares happily that both human rabies and canine rabies cases have dramatically decreased over the past two years. There were zero human deaths from dog-transmitted rabies in 2018 and so far this year.
Way back in 2015, her team worked in phases - In 2015 during September 14 to October 9 they vaccinated 33,217 dogs and the total number of dogs vaccinated in that year was 56,885. The high number but sporadic coverage highlighted the need for a more systematic approach. So in 2016, two permanent teams were formed to cover taluka by taluka and panchayat by panchayat. This year, the total number of dogs vaccinated was 51,294.
“We increased coverage but only 7.5 out of 12 talukas intensively covered. What we learnt from 2016 was the need to vaccinate more dogs and cover the whole state. So we increased the number of permanent teams (up to 8 teams) and divided them into North and South Squads,” recalls Julie.
The team implemented alternative dog catching techniques (hand-catching on the beaches) and continued work no matter what the weather was. Separate emergency teams for rabies response and rescues were employed too. In 2017, the whole state was intensively covered. It was for the first time that an entire state had been covered by mass vaccination wherein 96,033 dogs were vaccinated.
In 2018, teams were employed in Goa throughout the year for repeat coverage of the whole state and 8 out of 12 taluka’s were completed with over 70,000 vaccinations administered from January 1. The team investigated ways to further improve coverage - Oral Rabies Vaccine (ORV), vaccinating without catching, increasing coverage etc.
Mission Rabies also runs a mass educational campaign across the state targeting 90 per cent of schools. “We have a rabies post-mortem and testing facility in Panaji at Government Veterinary Hospital in Tonca with a Disease Investigation Unit. We conduct state wide surveillance. Also a there’s 24/7 emergency hotline number (7744029586) which people can call if they see a dog that may have rabies symptoms (biting, aggressive, salivating),” informs Julie. The team visits schools and trains the students how to behave around dogs (dog bite prevention) and what to do if bitten (wash wound with soap and water for 15 minutes then seek hospital treatment for post exposure vaccination).
