Human rabies cases today are predominantly associated with infection from rabid domestic dogs. Unlike dogs, a common global reservoir species that perpetuates rabies viruses (RABV) within their populations, domestic cats are much less frequently reported or vaccinated. Epidemiologically, cats are important vectors of lyssaviruses but are not viral reservoirs.
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August 2024
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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRabies transmitted by wildlife is the main source of human rabies mortality in Latin America and considered an emerging disease. The common marmoset Callithrix jacchus of Brazil is the only known primate reservoir of rabies worldwide. We tested whether alive free-ranging C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Human rabies outbreak transmitted by bats continues to be a relevant public health problem not only in the Amazon region. The disease has affected one of the areas with the greatest poverty in southeastern Brazil, a region inhabited by the Maxakali indigenous people.
Case Presentation: We describe four cases of rabies among indigenous children that occurred in the indigenous village of Pradinho, municipality of Bertópolis, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Objective: To analyze human anti-rabies post-exposure prophylaxis notifications in Brazil.
Methods: This was a descriptive study using data from the Notifiable Diseases Information System in Brazil, from 2014 to 2019.
Results: A total of 4,033,098 anti-rabies medical consultations were notified, averaging 672,183 a year.
Rabies transmitted by wildlife is now the main source of human rabies in the Americas. The common marmoset, Callithrix jacchus, is considered a reservoir of rabies causing sporadic and unpredictable human deaths in Brazil, but the extent of the spillover risk to humans remains unknown. In this study, we described the spatiotemporal dynamics of rabies affecting C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: International organizations advocate for the elimination of dog-mediated rabies, but there is only limited guidance on interpreting surveillance data for managing elimination programmes. With the regional programme in Latin America approaching elimination of dog-mediated rabies, we aimed to develop a tool to evaluate the programme's performance and generate locally-tailored rabies control programme management guidance to overcome remaining obstacles.
Methods: We developed and validated a robust algorithm to classify progress towards rabies elimination within sub-national administrative units, which we applied to surveillance data from Brazil and Mexico.
An effective surveillance system is critical for the elimination of canine rabies in Latin America. Brazil has made substantial progress towards canine rabies elimination, but outbreaks still occurred in the last decade in two states. Brazil uses a health information system (SINAN) to record patients seeking post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) following contact with an animal suspected of having rabies.
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