Control and elimination of rabies in Croatia

Abstract

Despite the implementation of control measures (preventive dog vaccination), rabies has become endemic in Croatia, with red foxes being the main reservoir species. Oral rabies vaccination (ORV) campaigns supported by the European Commission have been conducted twice a year since the spring of 2011. The first campaigns were limited to the northern and eastern parts of the country, and from the autumn of 2012, the program was extended to the entire country. The Lysvulpen vaccine containing the SAD Bern strain was used for ORV. Following the vaccination campaigns, the number of rabies cases decreased, and the last positive case was recorded in February 2014. The bait uptake ranged from 24.86% to 84.62% and the immunisation rate from 11.24% to 35.64%.

Fig 1. Total rabies-tested animals and rabies cases in Croatia from 1977 to 2017.

Fig 2. Phylogenetic analysis of the partial N gene of Croatian rabies virus (RABV) from 2011 to 2017, together with the representative sequences from GenBank.

The tree was constructed using the neighbor-joining method and rooted with the RABV sequence present in the Lysvulpen vaccine. The analysis included 367 nucleotide positions. Bootstrap values below 70% are not shown. The scale bar indicates the number of nucleotide substitutions per site. All RABVs belonging to the formerly established western European group are marked with a purple lozenge, while those belonging to the eastern European group are marked with a blue lozenge. The sequence from the last positive Croatian case is marked with a red lozenge.