Re-Introduce Anti-Rabies Vaccination

THE Ghana Veterinary Medical Association (GVMA) has called on the government to reintroduce the annual rabies vaccination campaign to ensure the effective control of the disease in the country.

The President of the association, Dr K.B. Darkwa, made the call at a news conference in Accra on Thursday.

The news conference was in reaction to a newspaper publication that a man who claims to be a veterinary officer, Nathan Bayor, is being held by the police for the death of a five-year old child he injected with anti rabies drugs.

Dr Darkwa said Bayor was not a member of the GVMA and has no training in veterinary services.

Rabies is an acute fatal disease caused by a virus which is transmitted through the bite of a rabid dog.

Giving statistics on the disease, Dr Darkwa said though elimination of human rabies transmission from dog-to-dog rabies cycle has been accomplished in most parts of the world, it still exists in some large geographical areas especially in Africa and Asia.

In the Greater Accra Region for instance, he said two cases of human rabies were reported in 2002 both of which resulted in death while 10 cases reported in the following year, three of the victims died.

In 2005, he said, 38 rabies-positive cases were reported while the Accra veterinary laboratory now diagnoses between six and eight cases every month on the average.

Dr Darkwa noted that rabies has no cure and the only way to control the disease is to embark on mass vaccination of pets, especially dogs and cats.

He said human anti- rabies vaccines imported by the government for the hospitals are much more expensive than that of animal rabies vaccines and added that the government could make a lot of savings by committing funds for annual rabies vaccinations of dogs and cats to kick rabies out of Ghana.