Side meeting for dog mediated rabies control and elimination: focus on West & Central Africa (91GS)

Rabies elimination serves as a model for operationalising the One Health concept. Numerous countries in Africa have the potential to lead the fight to end human deaths caused by dog-mediated rabies. Key to their success will be improving vaccination coverage, scaling up of the projects, ensuring long term sustainability and mobilsing of existing para veterinary or community animal health network. Members are urged to identify national points of contact for rabies and, in collaboration with public health authorities, develop and implement their national strategic programmes (NSP) to end human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030. Implementation of NSP remains instrumental towards accessing the pre-exposure prophylaxis from GAVI vaccine alliance. The existing tools and expertise from the United Against Rabies, and WOAH are available to support national rabies elimination efforts. This includes access to high quality rabies vaccines through the WOAH Vaccine Bank, increase their diagnostic capacity using the WOAH reference laboratory network, access to education and awareness material, and project implementation partners.

A sideline meeting was organized on 26 May 2024 in Paris during the 91st WOAH General Session for Dog mediated Rabies control and elimination focusing on West & Central Africa countries. A total of 27 participants attended the meeting. Delegate team from 10 Members (Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Chad, Togo, Namibia, Guinea, Madagascar, DRC, Nigeria) attended the meetings including official from WOAH and partner organisations. Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Institut Pasteur (IP) gave a presentation on continental approach & cost benefit analysis for dog mediated rabies elimination and Intersectoral collaboration & integrated management, respectively. Delegates from Namibia and Cameroon also shared their experiences on ongoing BMZ-OHRT funded Project activities – “Case studies on dog mediated rabies control and elimination”. The meeting discussed on how to move forward towards elimination of dog-mediated rabies by 2030.

The meeting was organized by WOAH Science Department in collaboration with WOAH Africa Regional and Sub regional Representations office, Bamako and Gaborone.

                                                                                    Agenda

SIDE MEETING FOR DOG MEDIATED RABIES CONTROL AND ELIMINATION – A FOCUS ON WEST & CENTRAL AFRICA

Date : Sunday, May 26th 2024

Time: 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM

Venue : Maison de la Chimie, Petit Amphitheatre