Current Rabies Status and Upcoming Methods for Eradicating the Disease Worldwide

Rabies continues to be a major and much-feared hazard to public health in the 21st century. The disease, which is brought on by neurotropic viruses of the genus Lyssavirus, manifests as a progressive and always deadly encephalomyelitis under treatment. As per Fooks and Jackson (2020), the rabies virus (RABV) is a member of the family Rhabdoviridae, which comprises viruses in the shape of bullets, the genus Lyssavirus, and the order Mononegavirales, which comprises viruses with non-segmented, negative-stranded RNA genomes. Based on preliminary statistics, it appears that rabies causes almost 60,000 deaths worldwide each year, more than any other zoonotic disease combined. The most common way for rabies to spread among animals is by animal bites, although it can also be contracted through licks, scratches, or the infecting of mucosa or open wounds with saliva Nearly all human instances of rabies are transmitted by dogs, who serve as the primary vector for the disease. Therefore, the first line of defense against human rabies is to control rabies in dogs, particularly in stray or free-roaming dogs (Meslin and Briggs, 2013). The World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), formerly known as the OIE, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) partnered with the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (GARC) under the United Against Rabies Forum (Tidman et al., 2022) to launch Zero by 30, the Global Strategic Plan to End Human Deaths from Dog-mediated Rabies by 2030.