Rabies scourge: Health ministry to vaccinate dogs across Ghana

As the world marks World Rabies Day Thursday September 28, Health minister Alex Segbefia says his ministry will begin a nationwide vaccination of dogs against rabbies.

The ministry is preparing to roll out the programme in 2017 when it would have submitted a vaccination budget to the Finance ministry.

A Joy News documentary has highlighted a worrying rise in deaths caused by bites from infected dogs. In a heartbreaking example, Joy News Seth Kwame Boateng narrated a story of a boy infected with rabies.

Pondering his fatal fate in bed, he asked his doctor ‘am I going to die?’. The doctor was speechless. ‘I didn’t know what to tell him,’ the doctor recalled the incident.

But rabies is an ‘automatic death sentence’ and the six-year old child died.

Dogs are the source of the vast majority of human rabies deaths, contributing up to 99% of all rabies transmissions to humans mostly in Asia and Africa.

At least 40% of people who are bitten by suspect rabid animals are children under 15 years.

Discussing measures in place to tackle the scourge, the health minister revealed that the ministry has adopted a two-pronged approach.

One is to increase the availability of vaccines to cure infected humans. The ministry has therefore ordered a new batch of vaccines expected to arrive “shortly”.

In a more pro-active approach to tackle rabies, the minister said “you must actually just vaccinate the dogs”. He said the ministry will go round region by region, identify and vaccinate dogs against rabies.

“…so that even if you are bitten…. your chances of contracting rabies are much less” he said. He also said there is the need for a sensitization for dog-owners to tag their pets.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|Edwin Appiah|[email protected]