Science
26 September 2014 vol 345, issue 6204, pages 1537-1652
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl

Policy Forum
Infectious Disease
Implementing Pasteur’s vision for rabies elimination
Felix Lankester1,2,3,*, Katie Hampson3, Tiziana Lembo3, Guy Palmer1,2, Louise Taylor4, Sarah Cleaveland2,3
Author Affiliations
1Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA.
2School of Life Sciences and Bioengineering, Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania.
3Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health, Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
4Global Alliance for Rabies Control, Manhattan, KS 66502, USA.
It has been 129 years since Louis Pasteur’s experimental protocol saved the life of a child mauled by a rabid dog, despite incomplete understanding of the etiology or mechanisms by which the miracle cure worked (1). The disease has since been well understood, and highly effective vaccines are available, yet Pasteur’s vision for ridding the world of rabies has not been realized. Rabies remains a threat to half the world’s population and kills more than 69,000 people each year, most of them children (2). We discuss the basis for this neglect and present evidence supporting the feasibility of eliminating canine-mediated rabies and the required policy actions.