Kenya Makes A Stand

Building on their strategy to eliminate human deaths from canine-transmitted rabies in 2014, Kenya have stated again their commitment to achieve this by 2030 through a dog vaccination exercise. The campaign was announced by Agriculture PS Andrew Tuimur during the launch of the national rabies elimination coordination committee that will oversee the vaccination exercise. 

“The campaign will also focus on awareness and education because a lot of people especially in the rural areas are not aware of the dangers of rabies yet they live very closely with dogs,” he said.

The campaign's plan is to vaccinate 70 per cent of dogs in one of the 5 counties involved each year. This will take the committee 5 years to get control of the disease within the dog populations of those counties and the remainder of the time until 2030 will be focused on surveillance and reporting. 

With over 95% of human deaths from canine rabies happening in Africa and Asia each year, Kenya is a key country in fighting the disease in the region. Support for the campaign has come from the European Union, the Africa Network for Animal Welfare, and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

Read the original article in The Star here