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World
Rabies Day, 8 September 2007, a new initiative supported by international
partners including WHO, CDC, Alliance for Rabies Control and the World
Organization for Animal Health was observed globally towards the common
objective of human rabies prevention and animal rabies control.
As
part of this initiative in India,
a technical seminar on animal bite management was organized by the National
Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), which is the WHO Collaborating
Centre for Rabies Epidemiology. This was well attended by several Municipal
Corporations and general public with wide media coverage.
On
this occasion, Dr S. J. Habayeb, WHO Representative to India, released the NICD-WHO
joint publication, “Rabies- General Aspects and Laboratory Diagnosis
Techniques”, a document that
describes laboratory diagnoses of rabies following biosafety
guidelines and provides updated information on animal bite management.
“The
National Guidelines for Rabies Prophylaxis and Intradermal
Administration of Cell Culture Rabies Vaccines”were released by Dr Shiv Lal, Additional DG and
Director, NICD. The intradermal route of administration of rabies vaccination
in Indiahas been approved recently in February 2006.
 
Rabies,
a dreadful and gruesome communicable disease continues to persist as a major
global public health problem. More than 55,000 people, mostly in Asia and
Africa die from rabies every year- a rate of one person every 10 minutes, of
which about 20,000 deaths occur in India.
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