New deliveries by the OIE regional rabies vaccine bank (Tunisia, Philippines and Indonesia)

Indeed, it is estimated that vaccinating 70% of dogs in zones where rabies is present can dramatically reduce human cases.

This strategy has proven to be successful in Mexico, for instance, where the number of rabid dogs has nearly dropped to zero after mass dog-vaccination campaigns, with a parallel decrease in human cases.

To enhance the implementation of such campaigns, the OIE regional vaccine bank mechanism recently enabled several deliveries of canine rabies vaccines to Tunisia, the Philippines and Indonesia:

• 80,000 doses of rabies vaccines were delivered to Tunisia in October 2015, with the support of the European Union. This delivery was the first step towards the implementation of a national vaccination campaign launched at the end of January 2016 by the Tunisian authorities on National Rabies Awareness Day ;
• 1,701,150 doses were received by The Philippines between January and February 2016. These recent deliveries raise the number of doses purchased by a beneficiary country in collaboration with WHO through the OIE rabies vaccine bank to almost 8 million;
• 100,000 doses, funded by the Australian Government in the framework of the STANDZ project, were shipped to Indonesia, at the beginning of March 2016.

Dr. Rachid Bouguedour on the national rabies vaccination campaign (Tunisia, 2016).