An Implementation Science Framework to Understand Low Coverage in Mass Dog Rabies Vaccination.

Background: Dog-mediated human rabies has been greatly reduced in the Americas and eliminated from most high-income countries. However, many countries in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America are still struggling with this gruesome disease. Mass dog vaccination, a One Health strategy, is the primary approach for elimination.

Challenging a paradigm: Staggered versus single-pulse mass dog vaccination strategy for rabies elimination.

Background: From smallpox to poliomyelitis, halting contagion transmission through simultaneous mass vaccination is ubiquitous and often perceived as the only possible solution. But implementing mass vaccination campaigns in large populations within a short period poses many challenges. For example, in Arequipa, Peru, sweeping mass vaccination campaigns conducted yearly over a single weekend have failed to achieve the required 'herd immunity' to halt canine rabies transmission.

Dynamics of influenza transmission in vampire bats revealed by longitudinal monitoring and a large-scale anthropogenic perturbation.

Interrupting pathogen transmission between species is a priority strategy to mitigate zoonotic threats. However, avoiding counterproductive interventions requires knowing animal reservoirs of infection and the dynamics of transmission within them, neither of which are easily ascertained from the cross-sectional surveys that now dominate investigations into newly discovered viruses. We used biobanked sera and metagenomic data to reconstruct the transmission of recently discovered bat-associated influenza virus (BIV; H18N11) over 12 years in three zones of Peru.

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis to Prevent Hematophagous Bat-Mediated Rabies Outbreaks in Remote Amazon Communities: Lessons from a Pilot for Public Health Policy.

In 2018, an outbreak of human rabies caused by the hematophagous bat hit the Brazilian Amazon Basin community of Melgaço, Brazil, resulting in the death of 10 people, 9 of them children. The incidence of rabies has been on the rise among populations in conditions of vulnerability in this ecosystem due to human expansion into sylvatic environments and limited access to public health services. To address this issue, in September 2019, a collaborative effort from national, local, and international institutions promoted and executed a pilot for pre-exposure prophylaxis of a population in high-risk areas for hematophagous bat-mediated rabies.