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. 2011;6(7):e20891.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0020891. Epub 2011 Jul 14.

Analysis of rabies in China: transmission dynamics and control

Juan Zhang  1 , Zhen Jin, Gui-Quan Sun, Tao Zhou, Shigui Ruan
Affiliations

Analysis of rabies in China: transmission dynamics and control

Juan Zhang et al. PLoS One. 2011.

Abstract

Human rabies is one of the major public-health problems in China. The number of human rabies cases has increased dramatically in the last 15 years, partially due to the poor understanding of the transmission dynamics of rabies and the lack of effective control measures of the disease. In this article, in order to explore effective control and prevention measures we propose a deterministic model to study the transmission dynamics of rabies in China. The model consists of susceptible, exposed, infectious, and recovered subpopulations of both dogs and humans and describes the spread of rabies among dogs and from infectious dogs to humans. The model simulations agree with the human rabies data reported by the Chinese Ministry of Health. We estimate that the basic reproduction number R₀ = 2 for the rabies transmission in China and predict that the number of the human rabies is decreasing but may reach another peak around 2030. We also perform some sensitivity analysis of R₀ in terms of the model parameters and compare the effects of culling and immunization of dogs. Our study demonstrates that (i) reducing dog birth rate and increasing dog immunization coverage rate are the most effective methods for controlling rabies in China; and (ii) large scale culling of susceptible dogs can be replaced by immunization of them.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Transmission diagram of rabies among dogs and from dogs to humans.
formula image and formula image represent susceptible, exposed, infectious and recovered dogs and humans, respectively.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The comparison between the reported human rabies cases in mainland China from 1996 to 2010 and the simulation of from the model.
The dashed curve represents the data reported by the Chinese Ministry of Health while the solid curve is simulated by using our model. The values of parameters are given in Table 1. The initial values used in the simulations were formula image.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The tendency of human rabies cases in 50 years.
Figure 4
Figure 4. The influence of initial conditions of dogs on the number of human rabies cases .
(A) formula image for different values of formula image. (B) formula image for different values of formula image. (C) formula image for different values of formula image. (D) formula image for different values of formula image.
Figure 5
Figure 5. The influence of initial conditions about humans on the number of human rabies cases .
(A) formula image for different values of formula image. (B) formula image for different values of formula image. (C) formula image for different values of formula image. (D) formula image for different values of formula image.
Figure 6
Figure 6. The variations of the infected human rabies cases for different values of .
Here formula image, formula image respectively, other parameters are as in Table 1.
Figure 7
Figure 7. The influence of parameters and on the number of human rabies cases .
(A) formula image in terms of different values of formula image. (B) formula image in terms of different values of formula image.
Figure 8
Figure 8. The combined influence of parameters on .
(A) formula image in terms of formula image and formula image. (B) formula image in terms of formula image and formula image. (C) formula image in terms of formula image and formula image.
Figure 9
Figure 9. The equal effect of culling and immunization of dogs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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