Community awareness regarding rabies and treatment seeking behaviours are critical both for the prevention and control of the disease in human and animals. We conducted a study to explore people's awareness about rabies, their attitudes towards dogs and practices associated with treating dog bites in Satkhira Sadar, a south‐western sub‐district of Bangladesh. Of the total 3200 households (HHs) surveyed, the majority of the respondents have heard about rabies (73%) and there was a high level of awareness that dog bite is the main cause of rabies (86%), and that rabies can be prevented by vaccination (85%). However, 59% of the dog bite victims first seek treatment from traditional healers instead of visiting the hospitals, 29% received the rabies vaccine, 2% practiced proper wound washing with soap and water, while 4.8% have not taken any measures. None of the victims have received rabies immunoglobulin (RIG). Of the respondents, 5.2% reported a history of dog bite in at least one family member, and 11.8% reported a history of dog bite in domestic animals during the previous year. The HHs having a higher number of family members (OR: 1.13, 95% CI: 1.07–1.2), having a pet dog (OR: 2.1, 95% CI: 1.4–3.2) and caring or feeding a community dog (OR: 2.1, 95% CI: 1.4–2.9) showed an increased risk of getting a dog bite. Among the bite victims, 3.6% (n = 6) humans and 15.8% (n = 60) animals died. As a measure for dog population management (DPM), 56% preferred sterilization while the rest preferred killing of dogs. The current treatment seeking behaviours of the respondents should be improved through additional education and awareness programme and better availability for the provision of post‐exposure prophylaxis in Bangladesh. We recommend scaling up national mass dog vaccination and DPM to reduce the burden of rabies cases and dog bites in Bangladesh.

Vaccinating dogs against rabies is an effective means of reducing human rabies. We subjected 1327 clinically diagnosed human rabies death and mass dog vaccination (MDV) data during 2006-2018 to quantify the impacts of MDV on human rabies incidence in Bangladesh and a subset of rabies death data (422) for clinico-epidemiological analysis. A positive and increasing trend of MDV (p = 0.01 and tau = 0.71) and a negative and declining trend (p < 0.001 and tau = −0.88) of human rabies cases (Correlation coefficient: −0.82) have been observed. Among 422 deaths, the majority (78%) of the victims sought treatment from traditional healers, and 12% received post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). The mean incubation period of rabies in cases with exposure sites on the head & neck (35 days) was shorter than the upper limb (mean = 64 days, p = 0.02) and lower limb (mean = 89 days, p < 0.01). MDV has been found to be effective for reducing human rabies cases in Bangladesh. Creating awareness among the animal bite victims to stop reliance on traditional healers rather seeking PEP, addressing the role of traditional healers through awareness education programme with respect to the treatment of dog bites, ensuring availability of PEP, and continuing to scale up MDV may help to prevent human rabies deaths.Rabies is a zoonotic viral disease responsible for the death of approximately 59,000 people worldwide with more than 3.7 million disability-adjusted life years lost annually 1 . Due to acute progressive encephalitis, rabies is almost always fatal once clinical signs appear. The disease occurs predominantly in impoverished communities, in both rural and urban areas, and has been recognized for over 4000 years 2,3 . Rabies is present across all continents, except Antarctica with more than 95% of human fatalities happening in the areas of Asia and Africa, and approximately 40% of cases in the population are aged below 15 years. Although all warm-blooded animals are susceptible to rabies, domestic dogs are the main cause of rabies virus transmission to humans in up to 99% of cases in rabies-endemic regions 4 . Most cases of rabies are caused by the bite of an infected dog. The effect of rabies virus (RABV) exposure depends on a number of factors, including the gravity of the wound, the anatomical site of the bite on the body, the viral quantity and variant (genotype) inoculated into the wound(s) and the timeliness of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) 3 . The clinical manifestation of human rabies can appear in any of two forms: the widely perceived furious (classical or encephalitic) form or the paralytic (or dumb) form 5,6 . Each case of rabies has