Studies On The Epidemiological Investigation And Prevention And Control Of CanineRabies In Parts Of Hunan

There were many factors for the trend that the incidence of rabies increased year after year, mainly, unscientific vaccination program, lack of immunization surveillance and lack of guarantees for the quality of vaccine products. It was urgent need to solved the problem such as investigating the prevalence of canine rabies, surveying the hunan rabies, working out scientific immunization procedures, ensuring the quality of vaccination and exploring effective ways to prevent and control rabies in Hunan Province.According to the investigation results that the number of dog raising, immunization, the occurrence of the epidemic, the epidemic surveillance and disposition during the year 2003 to 2007 in Hunan Province, the epidemic situation of canine rabies is much more serious and distributed in wide geographical areas. The population quantity of dogs all the year round and the number of immuned dogs were gradually increased in the past five years, but the low coverage in dogs as a whole in Hunan Province in 2007 was only 36.51%, much lower than internationally recognized 70%-75% to form the immune barrier.In order to investigate the virus carrying state and test antibody level of vaccinated dogs in Hunan, 142 healthy looking dog brain tissue samples were tested from eight counties (cities) in eight urban and rural districts in Hunan. The RT-PCR and direct fluorescent antibody test (FAT) results showed that there no rabies virus was found in the 142 dog brain samples. Investigation for rabies immunization of the above surveillance areas and the surrounding areas, the average coverage was higher than 70%.the number of carrying state dogs could be decreased in the areas where good vaccination program was undertaken. It was shown that the raising coverage of the dog population may resulted in the formation of immunological barrier.For the ELISA test of rabies antibody on the 156 dogs, the sera were randomly collected from some urban and rural areas of Changsha, Hunan Province, and the result shown that firstly, the seroconversion was low after vaccination in some areas in Hunan Province, only 32.05% in average. Secondly, there were certain differences in canine positive antibody rate among the counties (districts). Thirdly, the lower antibody positive rate in canine may be one of the reasons that the healthy looking dogs carry virus in Hunan Province. Fourthly, compared with the rabies incidence of hunan, a negative correlation between the dog antibody positive rate and hunan rabies incidence rate was found. Comparing different regions, age groups, sexes,the vaccines used and so on, it was found that more vaccinated dogs showed acceptable antibody titer in urban areas than in rural areas, dogs at age of 1 year old or above showed higher antibody titer than dogs younger than 1 year old, imported mono vaccine or combined vaccine gave better antibody titer than domestic products, These results might be related to the quality of vaccines, immunization operations, and immunization programs.Controlling animal rabies was the basic strategy to control the hunan rabies, Thus it is important to strengthen the animal immunization work in Hunan province, especially maintain high coverage in dogs, carry on surveillance of rabies immune antibody to the domestic dogs for setting up rabies vaccination program and for the guidance of rabies prevention and control. It is more suitable for large-scale antibody surveillance in order to understand the epidemiology of the rabies and provide exact and scientific epidemiological data for drawing comprehensive control measures.