National: Serbia one step closer to eliminate rabies

World Rabies Day 2015 National Conference on Rabies - Serbia one step closer to eliminate rabies Serbian Veterinary Service is making visible and significant progress in the promotion of One World One Health concept and eradication of rabies and other animal diseases, including zoonosis. Building on the long tradition of rabies control in Serbia and particularly with the EU support for the past decade, activities of Serbian Veterinary Directorate and other services have already resulted in a historically the lowest number of cases of rabies in Serbia in the last two years (from more than 250 in 2005 to only 3 cases in 2014 and 3 cases in 2015 in wild life, and no case in domestic animals population, including dogs/cats from November 2012). Veterinary Directorate, Serbian National Competent Authority, works closely with public health authorities and institutes, hunters, environmental protection activistsand many other stakeholders in applying successful, coherent, holistic and comprehensive approach with intensive collaboration and communication. The National conference entitled “Serbia one step closer to eliminate rabies”, will be held on the World Rabies Day (28th September 2015) in Belgradeand will gather the most important experts in the veterinary and human health, hunting and environmental associations and other institutions, organisations and stakeholders. This conference has been organized by the Veterinary Directorate and the EU funded Project “Capacity building for development of Animal Disease Compensation Fund”. The conference is an opportunity to share experiences and to learn from each sector contributions in the implementation of prevention and control measures in the eradication of rabies in Serbia. At the same time, the conference is an opportunity to inform the public about the progress and successes being made. The Veterinary Directorate has a long history in controlling rabies in Serbia. Over the past decade improvements have been made in control measures for domestic animals, such as rapid notification of suspected cases, vaccination and identification/registration of companion animals, and improved diagnostic capabilities. With the help of EU IPA projects, and the current EU funded project the Veterinary Directorate has implemented sustained Spring/Autumn campaigns of oral rabies vaccination of wild carnivores at the whole territory of Serbia for the past 5 years. With these measures resulting in the historically the lowest number of cases of rabies in the past two years, the Veterinary Directorate and the current EU project have developed a new Rabies Strategy for Serbia to cover the next period of 7 years (2015-2020) with the aim of achieving a rabies free country status.