Bridging the gap between knowledge and application for rabies control

While meeting rabies activists or government officials around the world I frequently hear two statements on rabies prevention and control “We already have the crucial tools” and “Having human and animal rabies vaccines available is not enough”.

These two statements highlight the sad paradox that despite good scientific and technical knowledge on rabies, this disease is still killing too many people and animals in the world.

On one hand we have good vaccines and diagnostic laboratory tests; on the other hand there is the challenge of translating this knowledge into practice and adapting these useful tools for different settings. Working together for successful rabies control requires a broad approach involving many different actors and targeting a variety of audiences. Easier said than done!

Often there is a lack of coordination and communication between those designing new tools, those deciding which tools are best to use, those purchasing the tools, those applying the tools and the end beneficiaries of the tools.

These audiences all have different priorities and may use a different language, which can help to explain the almost contradictory statements above.

Along these lines I would like to share with you a superficial internet-based analysis of attention given to rabies by different audiences.

Let’s look at the number of Google citations (number of results returned when searching for rabies) as an indicator of resources aimed at the general public and the number of scientific publication from standard scientific databases as an indicator of scientific interest, over a 10 year period.

There are around 3 million Google citations on rabies compared to about 3,500 scientific publications on or including rabies – positively surprising for a neglected disease like rabies.

Of course there are communicable diseases that are more prominent in both the general public media and in scientific outputs, such as malaria (11 million/ 30,000 for the indicators above) and tuberculosis (11 million / 50, 000). Malaria and tuberculosis occur in a similar range of countries to rabies, but have received much more international attention through the establishment of the Global Fund in 2002.

However, back to rabies, it is interesting to observe a significant rise, almost a doubling, in Google citations in the years 2007 and 2008, probably due to the first and second World Rabies Day campaign reaching out to the general public across the world.

In contrast, internet citations for malaria and tuberculosis, and scientific publications on rabies showed no major peaks in these years or in any other years

The visible indicators of interest from the two audiences seem to be driven by different mechanisms which would merit a more in-depth analysis on how public attention and scientific research are connected. - A disconnect between the two is a problem for how we translate scientific knowledge into public policy, the subject of another article in this issue.

Of course, this exercise is not telling us anything about the attention given to rabies by the numerous people who are living in rabies affected areas with no means to access the internet or publish a scientific paper.

If you have a story of bridging different audiences and making scientific tools work to bring about effective rabies control for those at risk, please get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.

By Lea Knopf, Director of Institutional Relationships & Policy for GARC.