Research

Getting rabies under control: Professor Sarah Cleaveland

Issued: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:07:00 BST

Pioneering research carried out by Glasgow Professor Sarah Cleaveland led to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Glasgow securing a grant of close to $10m from the Gates Foundation to eliminate rabies in low-income countries.

According to the WHO, recent increases in human rabies deaths in South America and parts of Africa and Asia are evidence that the disease is re-emerging as a serious public health issue. The most cost-effective strategy for preventing rabies in people is to eliminate rabies in dogs through animal vaccinations.

This is the first Gates Foundation grant to be awarded for rabies control and elimination, and it marks a paradigm shift by focusing on animal interventions to protect human health. A team of Glasgow scientists is helping to support the activities of this programme, which focus on large-scale domestic dog vaccination campaigns in Tanzania, Kwa Zulu Natal in South Africa and the Visayas archipelago of the Philippines.

An important aspect of the work of the group is the translation of research into national and international rabies policy, through collaboration and links with international health agencies. The global elimination of canine rabies is now widely recognised as a feasible objective.

Professor Cleaveland’s team have also received a grant of £635,000 from the Medical Research Council to provide additional support for epidemiological analysis of the data generated from the vaccination project. This research will be led by Glasgow Professor Dan Haydon. Using state-of-the-art mathematical modelling approaches, real-time feedback will be provided to the field teams to allow for iterative improvements in the design of canine vaccination strategies.

Professor Haydon’s research will also incorporate advances in genetic sequencing technology and analyses to generate high-resolution information about the different variants of the rabies virus circulating in the project area.

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