One Health for Dog-mediated Rabies Elimination in Asia: A Collection of Local Experiences

Although an effective human rabies vaccine has existed since 1885, rabies continues to kill an estimated 59,000 people every year. Sixty per cent of these human deaths occur in Asia. The number of animals, especially dogs, who die of rabies is uncalculated. To work towards the global target of eliminating dog-mediated human rabies deaths, the rabies community is applying the One Health approach by jointly focusing on humans and dogs.Written by a multidisciplinary group of scholars and rabies control programme specialists, this book is a collection of experiences and observations on the challenges and successes along the path to rabies control and prevention in Asia. The book:-grounds chapters in solid scientific theory, but retains a direct, practice-focused and inspirational approach;-provides numerous examples of lessons learned and experience-based knowledge gained across countries at different levels of rabies elimination;-brings together and highlights the practices of a strong, international rabies network that works according to the One Health concept.Covering perspectives from almost a dozen Asian countries and a wide range of sectors and disciplines, such as healthcare facilities, veterinary services, laboratories, public health institutes, wildlife research centres and academia, this book is an invaluable resource for rabies practitioners and scholars, but also those working in the wider fields of disease control and cross-sectoral One Health.

Vanessa Slack holds a BS in Zoology from Northern Michigan University and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, USA. Since 2018, she has analysed and mapped surveillance data from animal rabies cases and human exposure risks in Colorado and Texas. She then worked as a Zoonosis Control Program Specialist at the Texas Department of State Health Services, USA, with a focus on rabies case investigations and the Oral Rabies Vaccine Program along the Texas-Mexico border. She is currently working at the University of Michigan as an Associate Research Laboratory Technician conducting statewide disease surveillance through wastewater monitoring.

Deborah Nadal holds a BA in South Asian Studies and an MA and PhD in Cultural Anthropology. The book that resulted from her PhD research, titled "Rabies in the Streets. Interspecies Camaraderie in Urban India" (2020, Penn State University Press), has won the English Language Book Award in the Social Sciences at the International Convention of Asia Scholars, and an Honorable Mention from the New Millennium Book Award Committee of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. She then received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship from the European Commission for a postdoctoral research project on rabies at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine of the University of Glasgow, UK, and the Center for One Health Research of the University of Washington, USA. Currently, she teaches and does research on multispecies health at the Department of Humanities of Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy. She continues to collaborate with the University of Glasgow, and the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases of the World Health Organization as well, on rabies-related projects.

Sandul Yasobant has completed his health education and public health training at Utkal University (Odisha) and Sri Ramachandra University (Chennai) in India. He has completed the doctoral programme 'One Health & Urban Transformation' at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University Bonn Germany, and obtained a public health doctoral degree from the medical faculty, University of Bonn, Germany, in 2020. He holds two prestigious fellowships: Operational Research Fellowship-2015, India, and EBQ- VLIR-UOS Scholar-2016, Belgium. He is currently working as a technical officer (research) at the Indian Institute of Public Health Gandhinagar (IIPHG), India.

Florence Cliquet obtained her PhD in Immunology and Biochemistry at the Université de Lille, in France. She has been working on rabies since 1992. Currently, she is the Research Director of the OIE / WHO / EU Reference Laboratory for rabies, Anses-Nancy Rabies and Wildlife Laboratory, France. She has published more than 200 hundred academic papers, most of them on rabies.

Waqas Ahmad trained as a veterinarian at the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, in Pakistan, and received his PhD from the Institute of Zoonoses, Jilin University, Changchun, China. He has contributed to about 20 scientific publications. He is currently working as an assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Narowal Campus, Lahore, Pakistan.