After more than six years of absence of rabies in Bosnia-Herzegovina a new case in a dog was detected.
The non-vaccinated animal was euthanized in the municipality of Potočari, Srebrenica, 6 km from the
border to Serbia on 28th May 2020 because of clinical signs suggestive of rabies. One day later rabies
was laboratory confirmed. While illegal importation of the animal can be excluded, contact with infected
wildlife is to be presumed. Genetic characterization of the rabies virus strain is pending. The documented
case indicates that despite years of large-scale ORV campaigns rabies is not eliminated yet and may
persist at a low-level. As the number of rabies testings in recent years was quite low, there is a need to
enhance rabies surveillance to identify remaining rabies foci in wildlife.