Dog Population Management, Human Rabies and Dog Welfare

Background & Aims: Human rabies remains an important public health problem in many developing countries. Transmission by dog bites is reported in 94% to 98% of the cases. . Cases of attacks from dogs whose owner is unknown are known to be over-reported as compared to attacks from owned dogs. A reduction in free roaming dogs (FRDs) should reduce, through effective dog population management (DPM) biting incidences & thus the risk of rabies transmission. Responsible pet owners will not have their dogs roam free and let their dogs being spayed/neutered and vaccinated against rabies. But depending on the society there can be, apart from dogs that are owned by an owner, also community owned dogs. These dogs live in close proximity with the human population and have a lot of positive interaction. However if there is a rabies outbreak these dogs become a threat to human health. If dogs are aggressive and bite but they are not rabid there is dog-bite injury, which in itself can be very harmful. Aggressive behavior may however affect the communities’ tolerance towards these animals, which can have adverse animal welfare effects and a variable epidemiological rabies result’. It is of high importance to illuminate the link between human rabies, dog welfare and DPM. New insights will probably help to develop new strategies within the fight against the disease. Methods: We will review the current literature to evaluate the link between DPM Animal Welfare and Human rabies. The current most popular sources of scientific information in biological, (bio)medical and (bio)veterinary sciences – i.e. PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar – were searched. Results: Society has an influence on the way dogs are kept. In certain areas dogs are kept by owners and FRDs are abandoned pets because of behavior problems or socio-economic problems of the owner. These FRDs can be caught an transported to an animal shelter. In other societies dogs can be owned by an owner or by a community and in this case they roam free. These FRDs’ live in close proximity of people and are most times not spayed/neutered or vaccinated against rabies.