Many countries, including Australia, have reported increases in detected and suspected fraudulent certification and other documents associated with companion animal imports. Therefore, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (the department) has conducted a policy review of the rabies virus risk in imported dogs, cats and canine semen from approved countries.

Read more here: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/biosecurity-trade/import/industry-advice/2023/06-2023

It is generally accpeted that oral rabies vaccination (ORV) is the most underused of all tools in the global fight against canine rabies. In an emergency vaccination in the Zambesi region of Namibia a team comprising of Namibian veterinarians and FLI rabies experts was able to vaccinate more than 3300 local free-roaming dogs in just 4 days exclusively using oral vaccine baits containing a 3rd generation oral rabies vaccine. The data obtained impressively underline the performance of this methodology under field conditions and call for large-scale implementation.

Capacity building often initiates and catalyzes further countrywide efforts to implement national rabies control strategies. With the support and supervision of WOAH and under the leadership of two reference laboratories for rabies, the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute (OVI), South Africa and the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI), Germany, the establishment of two Southern African core cells of a future Southern African Rabies Laboratories Network has been launched recently.

Since March this year, the University of Oxford, UK, and the Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania, are testing a novel human rabies vaccine to be used in a single dose regimen in a Phase Ib/II trial in Tanzania. It is based on the ChAdOx2 vector, a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) similar to the technology used successfully in the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.