JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Rabies is caused by rabies virus zoonotic acute infectious disease of the central nervous system. Because rabies patients have prominent clinical manifestations not drink, so the disease is also known as "water phobia". However, diseased animals do not have this characteristic (Chatterjee, et al, 2018). The main clinical manifestations are peculiar mania, anxiety, fear, fear of wind and water, salivation and pharyngeal muscle spasm. Eventually, paralysis will endanger life. The various lengths of the incubation period are one of the characteristics of this disease. Most cases have occurred in three months, six months or more occurs 4-10%, more than 1 year about 1% of cases. The longest case in the literature is 10 years (Birhane, et al, 2017). Factors affecting the length of the incubation period is the age (children shorter), wound site (head and face occurs earlier), depth (deep early occurrence), wound several viruses, the virulence of the strain, and whether formal Debridement management and rabies vaccine prevention. Others such as trauma, cold, overwork and may contribute to the early onset (Fisher, 2018). Rabies was first proposed terms of the country is ancient Babylon. At that time, there was no effective rabies control method, and the pain was unbearable at the time of onset, and the mortality rate was very high. Therefore, many people chose to commit suicide after being bitten by dogs (Kim, et al, 2016). There are more than 150 countries in the world due to the rampant spread of rabies caused by a large number of deaths. At present, only one-quarter of the country can effectively control the occurrence of rabies. Especially in some countries with severe health conditions, the number of rabies cases is far ahead and difficult to control. In Asia, India is the most serious of rabies countries, 20,000 cases occur each year, followed by Southeast Asia and most parts of Africa. The vaccination rate of dogs in China is relatively low, especially in rural areas, free-range dogs are rarely vaccinated. Therefore, the death toll from rabies is still huge. The number of people who died of rabies in China in the past two decades has shown a trend of rising first and then falling. The number of rabies deaths rose rapidly in the 1990s, reaching a peak in 2007. After the unremitting efforts of relevant personnel in China, the number of rabies deaths has slowly decreased and has decreased by about 76% in 2013 (Lee, et al, 2017). At present, there are still a considerable number of wild dogs foraging outside in China. Garbage yards and schools are all places where wild dogs may gather. Thus, during the transmission of rabies, wild dogs are an important source of infection that cannot be ignored. In addition, wild dogs lack human domestication, and the situation that wild dogs bite humans is constantly occurring. Therefore, this paper conducts a comprehensive study of domestic dogs, wild dogs, and humans in studying the spread of rabies.

Objective:

This paper is to study the ecological transmission mode of rabies to make theoretical contributions to the suppression of rabies in China.

Methods:

A mathematical model is constructed aiming at the transmission mode of rabies. During the construction of the mathematical model, the relevant data comes from the officially published data in China and the research data of previous literature. According to this model, this study performs the fitting of the number of rabies patients and the prediction of the number of rabies patients in the future. Also, it studies the effectiveness of different rabies suppression measures.

Results:

The results of the study indicate that the number of people infected with rabies rises in the first stage, and then decreases. In about 10 years, the number of rabies cases will be controlled within a relatively stable range. According to the prediction results of the model in this paper, the number of rabies will eventually be controlled to about 500 people every year. Controlling the birth rate of domestic and wild dogs as well as increasing the level of rabies immunity in domestic dogs are relatively effective rabies suppression programs.

Conclusions:

The basic reproductive number of rabies in China is still greater than 1 after the study in this paper. Therefore, in terms of rabies control, China still needs many studies, policy formulation, and grassroots implementation. In addition, the research on rabies transmission mode and control measures in this paper can provide theoretical support for rabies control in China.