Bali Turns Back to Vaccinations After Culling Fails to Curb Rabies Outbreak

Jakarta Globe 21 Sep 10;

Jakarta. The Bali administration has finally agreed on a mass rabies vaccination program for dogs, hoping to end an outbreak that has killed at least 78 people since November 2008.

Governor Made Mangku Pastika said on Tuesday that the program, run in cooperation with the Bali Animal Welfare Association, would coincide with World Rabies Day, which falls on Sept. 28.

“With this cooperation, we hope to eliminate rabies in Bali by 2012,” he said after signing the agreement with the association.

On Monday, Pastika said the elimination program would “focus on vaccination and selected culling, rather than a mass cull.”

He added the vaccination drive would target 400,000 of the resort island’s dog population. To date, only 110,000 of Bali’s estimated 540,000 dogs have been vaccinated.

The government’s previous response to the outbreak was to order a cull of stray dogs, ignoring the World Health Organization’s recommendation that it vaccinate them instead.

It was widely criticized for the move, deemed by many to be ineffective.

Since then, it has put down more than 200,000 dogs, but the number of dog-bite cases has surged despite the cull.

A Bali administration spokesman announced that the number of dog-bite cases in the first nine months of this year was 38,000 — up from 24,000 for the whole of last year.

That increase saw the island’s full-year supply of rabies vaccine run out by June. Hospitals including Sanglah General Hospital, the administration’s referral center for rabies cases, are being forced to turn away people seeking inoculation.

While vaccinations are available at pharmacies, they remain too costly for most residents. While the official human death toll from the outbreak is 78, unofficial estimates put it at 93.

Pastika said the outbreak had drained at least Rp 25 billion ($2.8 million) from the island’s economy, spent on rabies vaccinations for both dogs and humans.

“We owe another Rp 7 billion to Sanglah General Hospital [for supplying vaccines] and even more to the central government,” he said.

The governor also said the impact had spread to Bali’s tourism industry, with the outbreak prompting some governments to issue advisories cautioning their citizens not to travel there.

The Bali Animal Welfare Association, which has always supported a vaccination drive over a cull, has itself vaccinated 45,000 dogs since the outbreak began.

Elsewhere, Mike Baker, director general of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, said a pilot project of the vaccination drive in two districts in Bali would serve as “a model for rabies-elimination programs.”