The Blueprint for Rabies Prevention and Control: A Novel Operational Toolkit for Rabies Elimination

Rabies is a prime example of a neglected tropical disease that mostly affects communities suffering from inequitable health care [1]. The false perception that rabies impacts on society are low is due to case under-reporting and limited awareness of the disease burden [2,3]. Effective tools for elimination of terrestrial rabies are available [4]. While the sustained deployment of these tools has led to some remarkably successful interventions [5,6], canine rabies continues to claim lives in rabies-endemic countries and areas of re-emergence, where .95% of human deaths occur as a result of bites by rabid domestic dogs [7,8]. Control programs targeting dogs can effectively reduce the risk of rabies to humans [3,9]. However, the design and implementation of such programs still pose considerable challenges to local governments, and a lack of easyto-use guidelines has been identified as an important reason for this. Global rabies experts from the Partners for Rabies Prevention have therefore gathered to translate evidence-based knowledge on rabies control into userfriendly guidelines. Existing information obtained from different sources, including previously published guidelines by international health and animal welfare organizations and scientific findings, has been packaged into a novel online document, the Blueprint for Rabies Prevention and Control (http://www.rabiesblueprint. com), which we describe herewith.