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. 2022 Apr 16;14(4):830.
doi: 10.3390/v14040830.

Development of Dog Vaccination Strategies to Maintain Herd Immunity against Rabies

Ahmed Lugelo  1   2   3   4 , Katie Hampson  2 , Elaine A Ferguson  2 , Anna Czupryna  2 , Machunde Bigambo  4 , Christian Tetteh Duamor  5 , Rudovick Kazwala  3 , Paul C D Johnson  2 , Felix Lankester  4   6
Affiliations

Development of Dog Vaccination Strategies to Maintain Herd Immunity against Rabies

Ahmed Lugelo et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Human rabies can be prevented through mass dog vaccination campaigns; however, in rabies endemic countries, pulsed central point campaigns do not always achieve the recommended coverage of 70%. This study describes the development of a novel approach to sustain high coverage based on decentralized and continuous vaccination delivery. A rabies vaccination campaign was conducted across 12 wards in the Mara region, Tanzania to test this approach. Household surveys were used to obtain data on vaccination coverage as well as factors influencing dog vaccination. A total 17,571 dogs were vaccinated, 2654 using routine central point delivery and 14,917 dogs using one of three strategies of decentralized continuous vaccination. One month after the first vaccination campaign, coverage in areas receiving decentralized vaccinations was higher (64.1, 95% Confidence Intervals (CIs) 62.1-66%) than in areas receiving pulsed vaccinations (35.9%, 95% CIs 32.6-39.5%). Follow-up surveys 10 months later showed that vaccination coverage in areas receiving decentralized vaccinations remained on average over 60% (60.7%, 95% CIs 58.5-62.8%) and much higher than in villages receiving pulsed vaccinations where coverage was on average 32.1% (95% CIs 28.8-35.6%). We conclude that decentralized continuous dog vaccination strategies have the potential to improve vaccination coverage and maintain herd immunity against rabies.

Keywords: decentralized continuous vaccination; herd immunity; mass dog vaccination; rabies; vaccination strategy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Map of the Mara region in Tanzania showing study wards and the assigned vaccination delivery approaches. Approaches comprised centralized pulsed vaccination (CPV), and three strategies of decentralized vaccination, specifically village-level continuous (VLC), sub-village level continuous (SVLC), and discretionary continuous (DC).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Dogs vaccinated in each strategy in the main and follow-up campaigns. CPV = centralized pulsed vaccination, VLC = village-level continuous decentralized vaccination, SVLC = sub-village level continuous decentralized vaccination, DC = discretionary continuous decentralized vaccination.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Vaccination coverage attained in each strategy at month 1 and month 11 post vaccination. Coverage was estimated from the number of dogs with microchips out of all dogs recorded as living at surveyed households. CPV = centralized pulsed vaccination, VLC = village-level continuous decentralized vaccination, SVLC = sub-village level continuous decentralized vaccination, DC = discretionary continuous decentralized vaccination.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Coverage estimates according to different methods of measuring coverage. Generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) estimates in each of the twelve study districts under each of the three coverage estimation methods at 11 months after the main vaccination campaign. 95% confidence intervals estimated using 1000 bootstrap samples from the fitted GLMMs are included for the estimates obtained using certificates and owner recall (vertical intervals) and using the gold standard microchip method (horizontal intervals). CPV = centralized pulsed vaccination, VLC = village-level continuous decentralized vaccination, SVLC = sub-village level continuous decentralized vaccination, DC = discretionary continuous decentralized vaccination.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Respondent’s perceptions regarding the location of the household relative to the central point clinic. CPV = centralized pulsed vaccination, VLC = village-level continuous decentralized vaccination, SVLC = sub-village level continuous decentralized vaccination, DC = discretionary continuous decentralized vaccination.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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