Namibia is committed towards the elimination of dog-mediated human rabies deaths by 2030. Despite global COVID-19 pandemic and difficult times, the veterinary services of Namibia placed high importance on rabies elimination and conducted a targeted mass dog vaccination campaign in the Northern Communal Area (NCA) on the 20th May 2020. The vaccination campaigns are ongoing in the region. The vaccination is targeted in the rabies hot spot areas in the region. As of 13 July 2020, a total of 20,512 dogs and 1,329 cats were vaccinated.
The vaccination teams are using a custom-developed vaccination tracking device, i.e. the Global Alliance for Rabies Control Data Logger (GDL) to capture the vaccination data, and the collected data is then integrated into a website-based rabies surveillance system (Rabies Epidemiological Bulletin – REB). The lessons learned using the paper-based form for data capturing and management of mass dog vaccination campaigns during the pilot and roll-out phase of the project (2016-2018) led to the implementation of this simple and accurate data collection tool in the second phase of the rabies elimination program in Namibia.
The locations of vaccinated animals in the rabies hot spot areas of the four regions of the Northern Communal Area (NCA) of Namibia. The black dots are the location of vaccinated animals during the ongoing 2020 campaign whilst the red dots are the vaccinated animals’ locations during the 2019 campaign.
The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) funded the Technical Support for Namibia in Eliminating Rabies in Dogs project to support the Namibian Veterinary Services in their pursuit of zero human rabies deaths in Namibia. The OIE provides technical supports in the implementation of the project.
