Loide N Efraim¹, Jacob Sheehama²* and D Haufiku³

¹University of Namibia, School of Public Health, Namibia
²School of Medicine, University of Namibia, Namibia
² School of Nursing and Public Health, University of Namibia, Namibia

*Corresponding Author:Jacob Sheehama, School of Medicine, University of Namibia, Namibia.

Received: December 13, 2021; Published: March 02, 2022

Abstract

Background: Rabies is a neglected zoonotic viral disease that occurs worldwide expect Antarctica. Rabies is an endemic throughout the world and they mostly affect poor and vulnerable population who live in remote areas. Death are rarely reported and human vaccine and immunoglobulins exist for rabies, however they are not accessible to the needy people. About 60 000 people die per year mostly in Africa. Domestic animal especially dogs are responsible for transmission of the virus through bites, scratches or saliva. Clinical symptoms may include unexplained tingling, fever, headache, and confusion. As the virus spreads to the central nervous system fatal inflammation of the spinal cord and brain develops. Rabies cause short and long term illness such as paralytic, hydrophobia.

Methods:A scoping reviewed and data were collected from five databases namely: PubMed central, biomedical central, HINARI, Google scholar and EBSCohost. Only articles from 2010-2020 were used and only ten articles were search or meet the objectives of the study.

Results: The studies conducted revealed that more effort was done on delivering vaccine to the communities, the educational campaigns were done accordingly. Although educational programs were provided and other public health services it’s discovered that 74%of dog’s owners expressed their knowledge and 24%have never heard about rabies and never took their dogs for vaccine.

Conclusion: Local vaccination campaign should make an effort to eliminate the spread of rabies between dogs and human, dog to dogs. Awareness campaign and educational programs should focus more on providing the right and updated information in order to reduce the spread of rabies in human and dogs. In a view of the Public Health importance of rabies, the government, NGOs and community people need to put more effort on the prevention and controlling rabies by making sure dogs are vaccinated against rabies, dog’s owners are given all the information on rabies so that they can help meet the government halfway on fighting rabies.

Keywords: Rabies; Public Health; Availability; Veterinary Services; Africa

References

1. Ferri FF. “Rabies. In: Ferris Clinical Advisor 2020”. Elsevier (2017).
2. Rabies vaccine information statements. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2019).
4. “WHO. Symptoms’’.
5. New Era.18.2.2013.
6. Namibia country report, 2010-2012” (2013).
7. OIE World Animal Health Information System. Namibia (2012): 1.
8. Namibian Broadcasting Corporation. Rabies, a concern in Namibia (2013).
9.  

Citation

Citation: Jacob Sheehama., et al. “Assessment of the Availability of Public Health Veterinary Services Towards Rabies, Namibia 2020”. Acta Scientific Veterinary Sciences 4.4 (2022): 01-04.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Jacob Sheehama., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.