Three in every four animal bites in India due to dogs, says Lancet

Over 5,700 deaths in humans estimated to occur each year due to rabies in India

New Delhi: Three in every four animal bites are due to dogs, with over 5,700 deaths in humans estimated to occur each year due to rabies in India, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-study conducted a nationwide community-based survey from March, 2022 to August, 2023, covering 60 districts in 15 states. Over 78,800 households involving 3,37,808 individuals were interviewed about animal bites in the family, anti-rabies vaccination and deaths due to animal bite.

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Researchers, including those from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai, found that three in every four animal bites was a dog bite. Over 2,000 of those surveyed reported a history of animal bite — 76.8 per cent of which (1,576) were dog bites.

Further, over six per thousand people might be experiencing an animal bite, “translating into 9.1 million bites nationally”, the authors said. “We estimated 5,726 human rabies deaths occurring annually in India,” they wrote.

The estimates can help understand whether the country is on track to meeting the global target of eliminating dog-mediated cases of rabies among humans by 2030, the authors said. “Zero by 30” was launched in 2018 by the World Health Organization and collaborators.

However, reliable and recent estimates of deaths in humans due to rabies are not available in India, where a third of global cases occur, the researchers said. They added that while cases of rabies deaths have declined over the past two decades, “India needs to fast-track its actions by adopting a focused one-health approach”.

“Integrating human and animal surveillance, ensuring timely administration of full course of post-exposure prophylaxis, and accelerating dog vaccination across the country are crucial steps towards this goal,” the authors wrote.

The authors also found that among the people who had been bitten by a dog (1,576), over a fifth did not receive an anti-rabies vaccination, while two-thirds (1,043) received at least three doses. Nearly half of the 1,253 individuals who received one dose did not complete their full course of vaccination, the team said.