The beginnings of a new Rabies Epidemiological bulletin for Africa

Initial data from the country reports submitted to the Pan-African Rabies Control Network (PARACON) meeting in June have been made available on the PARACON website as a precursor to a more detailed online epidemiological bulletin for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Currently data is provided for the 33 countries that participated in the meeting on: whether rabies is a notifiable disease in humans and animals, whether a national strategy exists to control rabies, whether dog vaccination is compulsory, and the number of certified Rabies Educators in the country.

During the meeting, representatives of each country used their country report data to assess their progress towards rabies elimination using the Stepwise Approach towards Rabies Elimination as guidelines. The results of this exercise are also available in the PARACON website.

These maps are freely available for download on the website and can be used in advocacy campaigns to generate further support for rabies control measures in African countries.

The PARACON website also has an archive of presentations made at the inaugural June meeting along with the resolutions and further supplementary information for download.

Summarized from the PARACON bulletin webpages