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Guinea’s fight against rabies: success in first nationwide dog vaccination

Guinea's fight against Rabies_Three African veterinary professional vaccinating dogs
With help from WOAH’s vaccine bank, Guinea has taken a significant step toward eliminating rabies with its first-ever nationwide dog vaccination campaign. Through collaboration and awareness initiatives, the country is on a mission to eliminate the spread of dog-mediated rabies by 2030 — discover how.

In 2023, Guinea rolled out a mass dog-vaccine campaign to control the spread of rabies—the first of its kind in the country. Between August and December 2023, around 90,000 dogs were vaccinated with vaccines procured through WOAH’s vaccine bank, bringing the dog-vaccine coverage to almost 70% in the capital, Conakry. A great accomplishment for Guinea, where dogs remain the main vector for the transmission of rabies, causing 99% of human cases.  

One Health in the face of zoonoses 

Much of the success of the campaign is due to Dr. Mohamed Idriss Doumbouya, Director of Guinea’s National Directorate of Veterinary Services (DNVS) and Guinea’s WOAH Delegate. He and his team collaborated with regional localities and engaged the global community to ensure the successful implementation of the campaign.

“Our counterparts in the health sector are working in the One Health spirit,” Dr. Doumbouya explained, “We ensured that this initiative was truly multisectoral.” Collaboration at both regional and international levels helped convert vaccines into vaccinated dogs. Locally, cities donated refrigerators to conserve the vaccines to localities that didn’t have access to them.

Globally, partnerships with USAID, US CDC, United Against Rabies (UAR) forum and the World Bank provided on-the-ground training, post-vaccination evaluations and funding for both vaccines and vaccinators. Through his efforts, Guinea’s Veterinary Services were able to procure high-quality vaccines through WOAH’s vaccine bank, which Dr. Doumbouya credits as a large factor for the success of the campaign. “We thought that if we were to have high-quality vaccines, they had to come from WOAH,” he said. “That way we wouldn’t run the risk of vaccinating the animals with anything below standard.”  

Rabies cases in Guinea

Recurrent cases of rabies in humans as well as animals has made the disease a public health priority in the country. According to the journal Veterinary World, between 2018 and 2020, around 775 animal bites were recorded on average each year—98% of these bites were from dogs and more than 70% of these dogs were infected with rabies.

Though concentrated in the most populous regions of Guinea, no part of the country was spared. To this day, reports of rabies deaths remain a concern in localities not touched by the vaccine campaign and areas where dog vaccinations were not conducted annually.

The future of rabies control in Guinea

Spreading awareness of the gravity of the disease goes hand-in-hand with any rabies control initiative. Dr. Doumbouya advises other countries considering following in Guinea’s footsteps to make community education campaigns a part of their plan. “We are in the process of creating an educational campaign to teach the public about the gravity of rabies”, he affirmed, “As well as a waste management programme because large numbers of free-roaming dogs gather around landfills looking for food, exposing nearby communities to potential zoonoses.” 

Preparatory measures are already in place for future wide-spread dog-vaccine campaigns, as Guinea aims to procure 150,000 more vaccines through WOAH’s vaccine bank before the end of 2024, and every year after until 2030. The goal? Herd immunity for the entire dog population. So far, the campaign has touched 11 localities and plans to reach harder to access communities as more vaccines come in. In addition to this, smaller local dog vaccine campaigns and public education events have been planned for World Rabies Day, on 28 September. 

Beyond future dog vaccine campaigns and surveillance is raising awareness of the gravity of the disease. “Rabies needs to be seen as a public health problem,”
Dr. Doumbouya insisted, “I think that the authorities are really ready to support, because today, in 2024, people continue to die of rabies in Africa.”

When asked if stopping the spread of dog-mediated rabies by 2030 was feasible, he did not hesitate to say yes. “I believe it’s possible. If all African countries put in place vaccine campaigns like this one. With rabies as a public health priority, the goal can be achieved.”