Mathematical models for dog rabies that include the curtailing effect of human intervention

Rabies is a zoonotic viral disease that is responsible for an estimated 55,000 human deaths per year, where dogs are the primary source of human cases. The current strategy to combat human rabies is to eliminate rabies from domestic dogs and wildlife via mass vaccination and education campaigns. For some countries, such as Turkey and most of Asia, this has never been a successful approach and rabies remains endemic there. For other countries, such as Greece, rabies is currently reemerging in wildlife and causing sporadic cases in the domestic dog population. Educational campaigns raise the awareness of rabies, such that people are more likely to restrain or kill a dog if they witness unusual aggressive behaviour. This effect of human intervention is absent from existing mathematical models for dog rabies. We use a stochastic simulation model to investigate the impact of human intervention on the dynamics and persistence of rabies. Our simulations show that elimination of rabies occurs when the likelihood of human intervention increases above a certain threshold. We also explore the effect human intervention has on the distribution of the infectious period of rabies, and conclude that human intervention is not merely equivalent to a reduction in the average infectious period. We thus, gain more insight into future rabies outbreaks containment.