GARC attends SEARG conference, Tanzania

The Southern and Eastern African Rabies Group (SEARG) conference took place from 12th-14thFebruary 2013 outside Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.Dr. Charles Rupprecht, Dr. Lea Knopf and Jane Coutts represented the Global Alliance for Rabies Control. The Tanzanian Government, WHO, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and FAO were also represented at the three-day event.

The SEARG network includes countries in southern and eastern Africa,but Dr. Louis Nel of the SEARG committee called for an integrated, continent-wide approach to rabies prevention and control. He proposed a pan-African rabies conference in South Africa for 2015.

The conference was opened by the Tanzanian Deputy Minister for Livestock and Fisheries, who emphasised shared ownership of rabies prevention at the scientific,country and community levels as the key to sustainability. He asked scientists to develop a common language to engage with policy makers and communities,suggesting that “exclusive language” risks “communication failure”. “You need to read the minds of the people, so they can understand it and use it to transform their environment,” he said.

Anastasia Pantelias of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, currently funding two major African rabies elimination projects in Tanzania and South Africa,noted this was the first time the Foundation had invested in rabies prevention.She emphasised the funding was catalytic, aimed at establishing evidence for sustainable, transformational change. The foundation is also providing support fora sub-regional vaccine bank in Africa, which aimsto serve as a stimulus for in-country, government commitment to sustainable management of rabies. She noted that the Rabies Blueprint and Progressive Control Pathways have provided examples of tools for effective rabies control, and that political will and “on the ground” efforts are now the key to making them work.

Each country in the SEARG network presented a report on the national rabies situation and progress since the last meeting. These talks were supplemented byin-country project and study updates, as well as community surveys and dog population studies highlighting some of the issues facing community-level initiatives.

Thefinal day involved a workshop co-organised by FAO and GARC. The aim was to takeone stage further the concept of a Progressive Control Pathway towardsRabies Elimination (PCP). Thistool was originally developed by FAO to help countries establish a step-by-stepapproach to Foot and Mouth disease control by assessing ways of reducing therisks. The PCP could be a valuable planning and partnership tool for rabieselimination, as it provides a framework for measuring a country’s or region’s progresstowards eliminating the disease. During the workshop, delegates were introducedto the basic framework, and discussed how the PCP concept could work in theirown country.

Insummary, the SEARG conference recognised the need for more governmentcommitment, improved surveillance and more comprehensive information flow, underpinnedby mechanisms for retrieving and analysing data from the local level, whererabies is experienced first-hand.

Contributedby Jane Coutts on behalf of the GARC team that attended the conference. More information on SEARG and the conference can be found on the network’s website at http://www.searg.info/doku.php