image: Dog is marked following vaccination at static point vaccination clinic in Blantyre, Malawi view more
Credit: Image credit: Mission Rabies.
A recent redesign of an urban dog vaccination campaign in Malawi based on real time data collection reduced the cost and time associated with rabies prevention. Vaccinating dogs can help eliminate human rabies infection in regions like sub-Saharan Africa where it causes thousands of deaths annually. From 2015-2017, Stella Mazeri and colleagues vaccinated more than 70% of the local dog population in Blantyre city, Malawi with a combination of fixed locations and door-to-door vaccinations. The latter was necessary to account for suboptimal turnout, but was expensive and time consuming. Guided by their previous work exploring why dog owners did not attend static points, in 2018 the authors increased the number of fixed service points. The authors set up temporary locations within 812m of 77% of dog owners, a distance previous research showed was the average people were willing or able to travel. The authors also set up additional, auxiliary locations in areas with low coverage. Even with door-to-door vaccination removed, approximately the same number of dogs were vaccinated as in previous years but in 11 days versus 20 and with 904 staff versus 1,719. According to the authors, the strategy of real time data feedback could be applied to other vaccination campaigns.
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Article #20-03722: "Using data-driven approaches to improve delivery of animal health care interventions for public health," by Stella Mazeri et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Stella Mazeri, University of Edinburgh, Midlothian, UNITED KINGDOM; tel: 00447828267711; email: <stella.mazeri@roslin.ed.ac.uk>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences