Vets call for reinstatement of national anti-rabies vaccination

Accra, Sept. 25, Ghanadot/GNA – The Ghana Veterinary Medical Association (GVMA) on Thursday appealed to government, as a matter of urgency to reinstate the national anti-rabies vaccination campaign which was stopped in 1998.

The GVMA said if this important national exercise was restored and conducted every five years, animal rabies would be controlled and consequently human rabies in Ghana would be a thing of the past.

Commenting on the current situation of rabies in Ghana on the occasion of World Rabies Day in Accra, Dr Kwesi Darkwa, President of the Association, asked Government to commit funds to procure anti-rabies vaccines which was cheaper instead of importing millions of doses of human rabies vaccines in anticipation of an exposure.

World Rabies Day is celebrated at the end of September every year to draw the attention of the world on the devastating effect of the dreadful but neglected diseases transmissible from animal to man. It is also aimed at increasing awareness of the disease and ultimately preventing human and animal rabies.

The rabies campaign is initiated by a group of international rabies scientist who have come together to establish the Alliance for Rabies Control.

Rabies, Dr Darkwa said, was an acute factual fatal disease caused by a virus which was transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal and characterised by disturbed consciousness, increased nerves irritability and subsequent symptoms of paralysis.
The disease primarily affected not only dogs, cats and other carnivores, but all warm blooded animals including man, he said, and noted that it varied indirectly with the amount of virus introduced at the site of the wound and a number of sensory nerves ending there at that site.

Dr Darkwa said the minimum period under natural conditions was 12 days and in rare cases may be as long as one year, but added that in the majority of cases clinical signs appeared within 15 days.

“In 1993 when we had anti-rabies vaccination campaign there were only five outbreaks as against 41 in 1994 when there was no mass vaccination. From 1998 to 2006 there has not been any mass vaccination the outbreak cases rose to 108. In 2002 56 rabies positive cases were diagnosed in the laboratories, 2003 (61 cases), 2004 (72), 2005 (78), 2006 (84).”

Currently, the Accra Veterinary laboratory diagnoses eight positive cases of rabies every month and this works to 96 a year.

.
He said the situation was unacceptable considering the fact that the disease could be easily prevented by vaccination which was not expensive.

GNA