At a consultation meeting on rabies prevention and control held by the Ministry of Health in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, at noon on January 30, Myanmar's Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Ahtun, added that by 2030, efforts will be made to achieve no deaths due to rabies at all.
Rabies is a public health problem. The prevention and control of rabies is an important task to protect public health.
Myanmar's Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Ahtun, said that in order to achieve the WHO's goal of zero rabies deaths by 2030, Myanmar must accelerate disease prevention and control efforts.
The mortality rate after rabies infection is high. According to the World Health Organization, one person dies from rabies every 15 minutes, and 55,000 to 70,000 people die from rabies every year. The highest number of rabies deaths are found in poor villages in Asian and African countries, which are more affected by rabies.
It is understood that earlier, Myanmar had developed a national plan (2018-2030) to reduce the incidence of rabies, according to which dogs were being mass-vaccinated in the township district of Levi in Naypyidaw, the town of Liangoo in Mandalay Province and the town of Mobi in Yangon Province as part of the "Health Strategy".
People in Myanmar have long been at risk of rabies. Due to the very high number of stray dogs and cats in the country, the risk of rabies transmission is very high. Although the country's largest stray animals are also actively controlled, children and people are bitten by stray dogs every year.
At present, in order to completely eliminate the danger of rabies in the country, the country has formulated a first-level health strategic framework, and the danger of rabies will be completely curbed by 2030 after implementation.
Rabies, also known as hydrophobia, has most of the clinical manifestations of hydrophobia, hydrophobia, indirect paralysis, etc. If the rabies vaccine is not administered, the mortality rate is 100%, and due to the long incubation period, some patients do not know that they have been infected with the rabies virus after contact with a sick animal or after being scratched.