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Flores, Lembata give grounds for effective, humane rabies control
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Concerted efforts -- Health and zoonosis experts discuss rabies control efforts in a discussion in Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara, on Tuesday. (thejakartapost.com/Markus Makur)
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lores and Lembata Islands in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) have proven that dog vaccination not only provides a solution for effective and humane control of rabies but also helps restore the social, cultural, and economic value of dogs in the community, an expert has said.
I Ketut Diarmita, the animal health director at the Agriculture Ministry’s livestock and animal health directorate general, said enhancing the capacity of animal health personnel and laboratories in the implementation of rabies control and eradication in Flores and Lembata was very important in the effort to control the disease in these areas.
“With competent animal health personnel, it has been proven that mass dog vaccination in Flores and Lembata can really control rabies,” he said in a workshop in Labuan Bajo, NTT, on Tuesday.
The first dog rabies case in Flores was reported in Larantuka, East Flores, in 1997, with the first human rabies fatality occurring in March 1998. The outbreak had a severe impact on the local community, as dogs are regarded as a valuable asset socially, culturally and economically.
To optimize efforts to control and eradicate rabies, the Agriculture Ministry, FAO Indonesia and the NTT administration collaborated to control rabies using a humane approach, in which mass dog vaccination was prioritized as the main strategy in reducing rabies cases among animals.
The rabies control project, implemented in Flores and Lembata islands starting in September 2013, has seen around 410,000 dogs vaccinated in 2014 and 2015 in more than 1,300 villages. Since the start of the project, the number of rabies cases had dropped substantially by the middle of 2016. (ebf)
