Rabies Deaths Linked to Cost of Vaccine

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/world/africa/rabies-deaths-linked-to-cost-of-vaccine.html

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Rabies kills 24,000 people a year in Africa, most of them children, because many people with the disease cannot afford the cost of the vaccine, experts of the disease said Thursday at a conference in Senegal. Rabies is caused mainly by bites from dogs contaminated with the virus. The vaccination of humans, pets and other dogs is the only way to prevent the spread of the disease. “This is the disease of the poorest of the poor who can’t afford the vaccine,” said Dr. Hervé Bourhy of the Pasteur Institute in France. A vaccine costs about $13 per injection, and four to five vaccinations are needed to create immunity. For many in rural African areas, the cost is prohibitive. Rabies experts from 15 sub-Saharan and North African countries who took part in the conference said the most effective way of halting the spread of the disease in much of Africa was simply to tie up dogs.