Looking at the reality to prevent and fight rabies

On March 21, Mr. Nguyen Van Long, Director of the Department of Animal Health (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) and the working group had a working session in Gia Lai province related to rabies prevention and control in the area.

Difficulties in managing rabies

In recent years, Gia Lai province has been one of the localities with the highest rabies deaths in the country. In 2023 alone, Gia Lai recorded 14 deaths due to rabies.

At the meeting, the Director of the Department of Animal Health surveyed the actual situation in the Chu Se and Duc Co districts, where there were deaths due to rabies in the first months of 2024.

According to a report from the Chu Se district, the total population of dogs and cats in the area in 2024 is more than 18,000. In 2023 and early 2024, 3 people in the area died due to rabies.

Faced with the increasingly alarming rabies situation, Chu Se District People's Committee has directed the Agricultural Service Center to coordinate with the Commune People's Committee to implement measures to prevent animal rabies according to the provisions of the law.

Specifically, conduct zoning and spray disinfectant chemicals around the cage where someone has been bitten to death by a dog to kill pathogens.

At the same time, encourage people to proactively buy rabies vaccines to vaccinate their family's livestock. On the other hand, propagandize and mobilize people in the district who have been bitten by dogs to proactively go to medical facilities for vaccination and antiserum.

Meanwhile, in Duc Co district, since the beginning of the year, there has also been 1 case of death due to rabies in Lung Prong village (Ia Krieng commune). Through verification, the case of death was due to the bite of an unvaccinated free-roaming dog. Meanwhile, the family did not get him vaccinated in time, leading to his death.

According to local assessments, due to limited budget resources, support for vaccination in farming herds is low and has not met the herd immunity requirement. On the other hand, people's practice of raising free-roaming dogs is still common, making management and supervision difficult.

Meanwhile, people who are bitten by dogs still do not voluntarily declare their status and get vaccinated against rabies antiserum.

Looking at the actual difficulties from the locality, Mr. Nguyen Van Quang, Chairman of the People's Committee of Ia Krieng commune (Duc Co district) said, there are about more than 600 dogs in the commune. The most difficult thing is funding to support rabies prevention and control.

Besides, people's awareness, especially among ethnic minorities, about rabies is still limited. For example, although the government has spread propaganda on social networking sites as well as mass media, people still do not follow it.

On the other hand, the economy of the people here still faces many difficulties, so when bitten by a dog, they do not dare to spend money to get rabies antiserum injections. That's why when people are bitten by dogs, the government doesn't know.

Massive propaganda to create good effects on rabies prevention and control

Mr Doan Ngoc Co, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Gia Lai province, said that the raising of dogs has clear legal documents. For example, raising dogs to roam freely will be subject to administrative sanctions and even legal prosecution if the dog bites and causes fatal consequences. The written regulations clearly state that, but when it comes to the grassroots level, localities have not yet implemented it or complained about difficulties.

“Letting dogs loose will be punished in the existing regulations, but localities have not yet implemented it and are complaining about difficulties. How dangerous are dog bites and how can we manage them properly? It is clear that when dealing with rabies, "top is hot, bottom is cold", Mr. Co shared.

According to Mr Co, it is necessary to further raise people's awareness and drastically eliminate rabies in dogs and cats.

At the meeting, Mr. Nguyen Van Long, Director of the Department of Animal Health raised many issues that need to be analyzed regarding rabies prevention.

Specifically, the Government and provinces all have very complete regulations on rabies prevention and control, but when brought to the local level, implementation is not drastic.

In addition, the annual plans that localities develop are not timely and close to reality. Therefore, the reported data still do not comply with the Government's regulations.

Meanwhile, the most difficult thing is still propagating information to households to raise awareness about rabies. Management of the dog herd is still the core. Currently, dogs mainly roam freely, so it is difficult to control. Therefore, it is necessary to manage herds better in localities.

Regarding vaccination, the Department of Animal Health has requested a lot of vaccine support for Gia Lai province. However, that is not enough, the core still needs the companionship of dog owners to widely and effectively vaccinate livestock.