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Report: Rabies from dogs kills 160 people a day worldwide

By Amy R. Connolly

LONDON, April 18 (UPI) -- Canine rabies vaccines may be the single factor that stands between life and death for up to 59,000 people a year worldwide, the Global Alliance for Rabies Control said in a recently released report.

Some 160 people a day die from preventable canine rabies, a majority in India and other developing countries where hospitals do little to provide care and death is inevitable. Rabies in dogs also causes annual economic losses up to $8.6 billion annually around the globe, researchers found.

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The study by the London-based Global Alliance for Rabies Control, the first of its kind, said rabies is almost always fatal, but nearly 100 percent preventable. Canine vaccines can prevent the disease worldwide, but there are no programs in place to make it happen.

''Success in tackling the problem is contingent on investment in dog rabies control, which we show has been severely lacking," lead author Katie Hampson wrote in the report. "Long-term mass dog vaccination efforts could reduce medical sector and societal costs, and elimination is feasible with currently available methods, however innovative financing models are required to overcome institutional barriers."

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Rabies has been all but eliminated in most developed countries. In the United States, the incidence of human rabies dropped from 100 or more a year at the turn of the century to a current average of 2 or 3 annually. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said an aggressive vaccination program for both animals and humans has quelled the disease.

In 2010, the CDC reported 6,154 rabid animals, mostly raccoons. In 2011, four people died as a result of rabies; two were infected by rabid dogs in foreign countries, one was bitten by a bat and the source of the fourth infection is unknown.

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Louis Nel, executive director of the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, said the research brings scientists one step closer to helping rabies victims.

"This ground-breaking study is an essential step towards improved control and eventual elimination of rabies," he said. "An understanding of the actual burden helps us determine and advocate for the resources needed to tackle this fatal disease."

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