BackgroundOver 20 000 people die from rabies each year in India. At least 95 % of people contract rabies from an infected dog. Annual vaccination of over 70 % of the dog population has eliminated both canine and human rabies in many countries. Despite having the highest burden of rabies in the world, there have been very few studies which have reported the successful, large scale vaccination of dogs in India. Furthermore, many Indian canine rabies vaccination programmes have not achieved high vaccine coverage.MethodsIn this study, we utilised a catch-vaccinate-release approach in a canine rabies vaccination programme in 18 wards in Ranchi, India. Following vaccination, surveys of the number of marked, vaccinated and unmarked, unvaccinated dogs were undertaken. A bespoke smartphone ‘Mission Rabies’ application was developed to facilitate data entry and team management. This enabled GPS capture of the location of all vaccinated dogs and dogs sighted on post vaccination surveys. In areas where coverage was below 70 %, catching teams were re-deployed to vaccinate more dogs followed by repeat survey.ResultsDuring the initial vaccination cycle, 6593 dogs were vaccinated. Vaccination coverage was over 70 % in 14 of the 18 wards. A second cycle of vaccination was performed in the 4 wards where initial vaccination coverage was below 70 %. Following this second round of vaccination, coverage was reassessed and found to be over 70 % in two wards and only just below 70 % in the final two wards (66.7 % and 68.2 %, respectively).ConclusionOur study demonstrated that mobile technology enabled efficient team management and rapid data entry and analysis. The vaccination approach outlined in this study has the potential to facilitate the rapid vaccination of large numbers of dogs at a high coverage in free roaming dog populations in India.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-015-1320-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Dog-mediated rabies kills tens of thousands of people each year in India, representing one third of the estimated global rabies burden. Whilst the World Health Organization (WHO), World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have set a target for global dog-mediated human rabies elimination by 2030, examples of large-scale dog vaccination programs demonstrating elimination remain limited in Africa and Asia. We describe the development of a data-driven rabies elimination program from 2013 to 2019 in Goa State, India, culminating in human rabies elimination and a 92% reduction in monthly canine rabies cases. Smartphone technology enabled systematic spatial direction of remote teams to vaccinate over 95,000 dogs at 70% vaccination coverage, and rabies education teams to reach 150,000 children annually. An estimated 2249 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were averted over the program period at 526 USD per DALY, making the intervention ‘very cost-effective’ by WHO definitions. This One Health program demonstrates that human rabies elimination is achievable at the state level in India.

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