Paweł Trębas

Rabies as a disease still represents a threat to humans and animals, and as zoonosis has to be reported and subjected to official control. Under the current law, dogs over three months old should be compulsory vaccinated and boostered every 12 months. The introduction of the rules reduced significantly the incidence of the disease in these animals (9). However, rabies virus has found a new effective host, and from the middle of the 50’s the red fox has become the main infected species (5). Systematic increase in the number of rabies cases in foxes in 1970’s and the lack of effectiveness of conventional methods of fox rabies control forced the course of action aiming at the disruption of the natural route of disease transmission by reducing the fox population density below a certain threshold, until oral rabies vaccination (ORV) of foxes against rabies has been introduced. ORV was carried out for the first time in 1993 in a limited area of Western Poland and in 2002 the whole area of the country was covered with vaccination. With the enlargement of the area of ORV campaign, the number of rabies cases decreased systematically in subsequent years (4, 6, 7). However, achieving total eradication of rabies, using ORV was more complicated than originally expected. One of the crucial elements of ORV is analysis of the current rabies epidemiological situation on the territory of vaccine distribution. Based on epidemiological analysis correction/modification of ORV campaigns can be made. The objective of this study was to describe and analyse epidemiological data regarding rabies incidence and recent trends of rabies in domestic and wild animals in Poland in 2009 and 2010 with visualisation of geographical distribution of rabies outbreaks.