Speaker
Description
Rabies is a fatal zoonotic disease and remains to be a priority health concern in the Philippines. Dogs remain to be the principal carrier of rabies and despite the fatality of rabies, it is a vaccine-preventable disease. Currently, the Philippine health officials have been conducting mass dog vaccination campaigns with the goal of having a rabies-free Philippines by the year 2020. However, statistical information about the disease poses a challenge and gives rise to doubts on whether the goal is achievable. In line with this goal, our aim for this study was to see whether eliminating dog rabies in the country is possible. Here, we developed a simple mathematical model, following the SEIR framework, that describes the dynamics of rabies infection among dogs in the presence of mass vaccination wherein some model parameters were calibrated from actual data sets. We used the model to predict the long-term rabies incidence and to analytically find an expression for the basic reproduction number in terms of vaccination rate, dog reproduction rate, transmission rate, and rate of vaccination immunity loss. By numerical simulations, we were able to determine the parameter combinations or scenarios for zero rabies infection. We assessed the validity and feasibility of these scenarios via data analysis. Our preliminary findings pointed to mathematical modelling as an important tool to make realistic projections about the rabies disease.
