Landmark achievement in India: Goa declared a 'Rabies Controlled Area'

Goa has taken a giant step forward eliminating one of the world's deadliest diseases. In June 2021 it became the first Indian State to be declared a 'Rabies Controlled Area'.

We started our mission to end rabies in India - to demonstrate how new methods of rabies prevention could save lives. India is the world's hotspot for rabies, with a third of all estimated human rabies cases. Globally, rabies still claims the lives of approximately 59,000 people each year, with a staggering 20,000 of these fatalities occurring in India. According to the World Health Organization, up to 60% of rabies deaths in the country are children under the age of fifteen. This means that more children die from rabies in India than any other nation. Goa suffered the consequences of rabies circulating in the roaming dog population, with human deaths occurring when people did not get post-exposure treatment following a bite from a rabid dog.

Since our initial campaign our programme has grown from strength to strength. Our first campaign saw over 60,000 dogs were vaccinated across 14 cities in just 4 weeks. Since 2013, we have worked in the state of Goa, in collaboration with the local government, to implement an effective rabies control strategy. We have established comprehensive vaccination, education and surveillance programmes across Goa. The programme in Goa is the largest continuous rabies control effort to have ever taken place in India. Ground-breaking progress has been made in Goa, demonstrating that stopping people dying from this cruel disease is feasible in India through mass dog vaccination.

Crucially, our programmes are working, and Goa was declared a 'Rabies Controlled Area', after the largest continuous rabies control effort to have ever taken place in India. The government announced that rabies had successfully been eliminated from most parts of the state. The declaration is a significant breakthrough in the fight against rabies in India, as it provided the state government with the authority to enforce dog vaccination and reporting of suspect cases. This was a landmark achievement, setting a precedent and a roadmap for other states to follow.

Since 2021, we have transitioned from a focus of rabies elimination to long-term maintenance of freedom from rabies. Our strategy in Goa has now shifted to focus on community engagement and intensifying surveillance, especially at the state border to keep rabies under control in Goa, while continuing to deliver our rabies education programmes to communities across the state.

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