Vietnam moves to eliminate rabies

The Prime Minister has approved a national programme to control rabies in pet dogs and humans by 2021 with the aim of stamping out the disease.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 20:42

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – The Prime Minister has approved a national programme to control rabiesin pet dogs and humans by 2021 with the aim of stamping out the disease.

The programme, designed for 2017-2021, targets that the rate of vaccinated pet dogsin communes, wards and towns will reach over 85 percent, over 70 percent ofprovinces will record no incident of rabies in pet dogs in two consecutiveyears.

By 2021, over 95percent of communes, wards and towns will provide lists of households with petdogs and the number of fatalities due to rabies will be reduced by 60 percentin comparison with the average cases recorded in 2011-2015.

The programme also comes up with a host of measures, including developing anddelivering communications documents, improving the capacity of the monitoringsystem, tightening the transportation of dogs, and investigating and handlingrabies hotspots.

Rabies remains a major concern worldwide, killing more than 55,000 people everyyear.

In January-September,2016, rabies claimed 49 lives in Vietnam, higher than that of the same periodlast year.

Vietnam is strivingto become one of the leading ASEAN countries in completely eliminatingrabies.-VNA

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