Mission Rabies

Malawi is listed by the World Health Organisation as a high rabies risk country, in Blantyre, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital described the largest number of paediatric rabies cases from a single institution in Africa over a nine month period June 2011 and February 2012. This represented a three-fold increase in incidence between 2002 and 2005. Mission Rabies runs large scale mass canine vaccination projects targeting a minimum of 70% of the dog population annually for at least three years, in accordance with World Health Organization recommendations as the most sustainable and cost-effective way to control rabies impact in the human population. We additionally deliver active canine rabies surveillance, teach rabies risk reduction education in schools and promote public awareness of the disease. In May 2015 we started working in Blantyre City via these methods – vaccinating over 35,000 dogs and educating over 49,000 children in our first month delivering over 70% vaccination coverage of the city. Since then we have expanded our work covering the whole Southern and Central Regions and have vaccinated more than 1,000,000 dogs and educated more than 3,000,000 children.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital used to record the highest mortality for children from rabies in any hospital in Africa - it is now one of the lowest. In our project region, human rabies has been declining since the start of our programmes and is projected to reach zero in the coming years, making Malawi the first country to achieve this in the region.