APHIS receives funding to address multi-state rabies outbreaks

About 60,000 people are exposed to rabies virus in the U.S. each year, mainly from interactions with wildlife and unvaccinated domestic animals, according to 2022 data from the U.S. National Rabies Surveillance System published this July in JAVMA. The primary hosts for rabies in the U.S. are bats, raccoons, skunks, foxes, and the small Indian mongoose.

More recently, wildlife rabies outbreaks in Alabama, Maine, and Vermont have prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to approve nearly $19 million in emergency funding. The money will be used to manage rabies in six emerging areas within existing rabies management zones that have an elevated risk for rabies spread: Watertown and Buffalo, New York; Youngstown, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Birmingham, Alabama; and rural regions of eastern Vermont and western New Hampshire.

The emergency transfer will also allow USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to implement supplemental oral rabies vaccination (ORV) operations, such as increasing bait density, expanding the area currently under management, and conducting additional ORV baiting actions, according to an August 15 press release.

The APHIS National Rabies Management Program (NRMP) controls and works to eliminate rabies virus in wildlife, such as raccoons, coyotes, and foxes. One way it has prevented the spread of raccoon rabies is by establishing an ORV zone from Maine to Ohio along the Canadian border and from Ohio to Alabama. The NRMP also collaborates with the Texas Department of State Health Services to maintain an ORV zone along the border of Texas and Mexico to prevent the reemergence of canine rabies into the U.S.

“APHIS has been able to support emergency responses in recent years using appropriated funding, but growing costs and the need to provide an increasing number of rabies responses has depleted available resources. This emergency funding is being redirected from unspent balances from previous animal and plant health emergencies,” according to the release.

One of the barriers to preventing the spread of rabies is limitations that restrict such targeted rabies elimination programs from being scaled up to achieve broader impact, according to the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (GARC).

GARC hopes to highlight the need to break through the boundaries that prevent rabies elimination with this year’s World Rabies Day. September 28 marks the 18th year of the event, which is meant to raise awareness and advocate for actions that will reduce human deaths from the dog-mediated variant of rabies worldwide.

This year’s theme, “Breaking Rabies Boundaries,” takes on dual meaning, acknowledging not only the barriers within people’s control but also the transboundary nature of rabies itself, according to GARC, the day’s originator.

“Because so many boundaries potentially exist that prevent us from achieving rabies elimination, the theme has been made purposefully open so that it can be used to address any of these boundaries, ranging from One Health, collaboration across diseases, boundaries to vaccination and many more,” the GARC website states.

The GARC suggests participants celebrate World Rabies Day with a canine vaccination campaign, educational initiatives for veterinary clients, improving or undertaking laboratory diagnosis, capturing or reporting rabies data, partnering with others, or advocating for rabies elimination.

The Global Alliance for Rabies Control started the campaign in 2007 to help achieve its goal of preventing rabies in humans and controlling rabies in animals. World Rabies Day is observed by the United Nations and endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the AVMA, among others. The day of the annual event is the anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur, who worked to develop the first human rabies vaccine.

According to the WHO, rabies causes 59,000 human deaths annually in over 150 countries, with 95% of cases occurring in Africa and Asia. This number is likely a major underestimate because of underreporting, the WHO states. The WHO adds that the disease disproportionally affects rural poor populations, with approximately half of cases involving children under 15 years old. Unvaccinated dogs are the main source of human rabies deaths, responsible for up to 99% of all rabies transmissions to humans globally.

A version of this story appears in the October 2024 print issue of JAVMA