The major part of the global burden of dog-mediated rabies falls on Africa and Asia, where still an estimated 60,000 people die of the disease annually. Like in many African countries, dog-mediated rabies is a major public health concern in Namibia, costing the country an estimated 242 human deaths during the past two decades, in particular in the Northern Communal Areas (NCAs). Consequently, under the "One Health" concept, the Namibian government adopted a National Rabies Control Strategy in 2015, which strives to contribute to the global goal of ending dog-mediated human rabies deaths by 2030. A key component of this strategy was the implementation a dog rabies elimination program in the NCAs in 2016, being designed as a stepwise regional rollout strategy by building on experience gained in a pilot project area. The area of implementation covers approximately 263,376 km2 and 64 constituencies, with around 1.2 million inhabitants and estimated 93,000 dogs.
Domestic dogs are responsible for 99% of all cases of human rabies and thus, mass dog vaccination has been demonstrated to be the most effective approach towards the elimination of dog-mediated human rabies. Namibia demonstrated the feasibility of this approach by applying government-led strategic rabies vaccination campaigns to reduce both human and dog rabies incidences in the Northern Communal Areas of Namibia since 2016. The lessons learnt using paper-based form for data capturing and management of mass dog vaccination campaign during the pilot and roll out phase of the project (2016–2018) led to the implementation of a simple and accurate data collection tool in the second phase (2019– 2022) of the rabies elimination program. In this paper, we describe the implementation of such custom-developed vaccination tracking device, i.e. the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (GARC) Data Logger (GDL), and the integration of the collected data into a websitebased rabies surveillance system (Rabies Epidemiological Bulletin—REB) during 2019 and 2020 campaigns. A total of 10,037 dogs and 520 cats were vaccinated during the 2019 campaign and 13,219 dogs and 1,044 cats during the 2020 campaign. The vaccination data were recorded with the GDL and visualized via REB. Subsequent GIS-analysis using gridded population data revealed a suboptimal vaccination coverage in the great majority of grid cells (82%) with a vaccination coverage below 50%. Spatial regression analysis identified the number of schools, estimated human density, and adult dog population were associated with the vaccination performance. However, there was an inverse correlation to human densities. Nonetheless, the use of the GDL improved data capturing and monitoring capacity of the campaign, enabling the Namibian government to improve strategies for the vaccination of at-risk areas towards achieving adequate vaccination coverage which would effectively break the transmission of rabies. ; S1 Appendix. Explanation on OLS, spatial regression model and model ...
Domestic dogs are responsible for 99% of all cases of human rabies and thus, mass dog vaccination has been demonstrated to be the most effective approach towards the elimination of dog-mediated human rabies. Namibia demonstrated the feasibility of this approach by applying government-led strategic rabies vaccination campaigns to reduce both human and dog rabies incidences in the Northern Communal Areas of Namibia since 2016. The lessons learnt using paper-based form for data capturing and management of mass dog vaccination campaign during the pilot and roll out phase of the project (2016–2018) led to the implementation of a simple and accurate data collection tool in the second phase (2019–2022) of the rabies elimination program. In this paper, we describe the implementation of such custom-developed vaccination tracking device, i.e. the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (GARC) Data Logger (GDL), and the integration of the collected data into a website-based rabies surveillance system (Rabies Epidemiological Bulletin—REB) during 2019 and 2020 campaigns. A total of 10,037 dogs and 520 cats were vaccinated during the 2019 campaign and 13,219 dogs and 1,044 cats during the 2020 campaign. The vaccination data were recorded with the GDL and visualized via REB. Subsequent GIS-analysis using gridded population data revealed a suboptimal vaccination coverage in the great majority of grid cells (82%) with a vaccination coverage below 50%. Spatial regression analysis identified the number of schools, estimated human density, and adult dog population were associated with the vaccination performance. However, there was an inverse correlation to human densities. Nonetheless, the use of the GDL improved data capturing and monitoring capacity of the campaign, enabling the Namibian government to improve strategies for the vaccination of at-risk areas towards achieving adequate vaccination coverage which would effectively break the transmission of rabies.
