A Survey of Dog Owners in Remote Northern Australian Indigenous Communities to Inform Rabies Incursion Planning

Hudson, Emily G.; Dhand, Navneet; Dürr, Salome Esther; Ward, Michael P. (2016). A Survey of Dog Owners in Remote Northern Australian Indigenous Communities to Inform Rabies Incursion Planning. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 10(4), e0004649. Public Library of Science 10.1371/journal.pntd.0004649

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Australia is underprepared for a rabies incursion due to a lack of information about how a rabies outbreak would spread within the susceptible canine populations and which control strategies would be best to control it. The aim of this study was to collect information to parameterize a recently developed dog rabies spread model as well as use this information to gauge how the community would accept potential control strategies. Such information-together with model outputs-would be used to inform decision makers on the best control strategies and improve Australia's preparedness against a canine rabies incursion. The parameters this study focussed on were detection time, vaccination rates and dog-culling and dog movement restriction compliance. A cross-sectional survey of 31 dog-owners, using a questionnaire, was undertaken in the five communities of the Northern Peninsular Area (NPA) in northern Australia regarding community dog movements, veterinary visits, reporting systems, perceptions of sick dogs and potential human behaviours during hypothetical rabies outbreaks. It highlighted the significant shortfalls in veterinary care that would need to be vastly improved during an outbreak, who educational programs should be targeted towards and which dog movements should be restricted. The results indicate that men were significantly more likely than women to allow their dogs to roam and to move their dogs. The current low vaccination rate of 12% highlighted the limited veterinary services that would need to be substantially increased to achieve effective rabies control. Participation in mass vaccination was accepted by 100% of the respondents. There was lower acceptance for other possible rabies control strategies with 10-20% of the respondents stating a resistance to both a mass culling program and a ban on dog movements. Consequently, movement bans and mass dog culling would have limited effectiveness as a control strategy in the NPA community. More than half of the respondents said that they would report their sick dogs within a week. This would lead to a much more optimistic rabies detection time than observed in other regions with recent dog rabies outbreaks. Findings from this study can be used to parameterize a recently developed dog rabies spread model as well as to develop informed policies for managing a future rabies incursion, thus improving Australia's preparedness against a canine rabies incursion.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

05 Veterinary Medicine > Research Foci > Veterinary Public Health / Herd Health Management
05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Research and Veterinary Public Health (DCR-VPH) > Veterinary Public Health Institute
05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Research and Veterinary Public Health (DCR-VPH)

UniBE Contributor:

Dürr, Salome Esther

Subjects:

600 Technology > 630 Agriculture

ISSN:

1935-2727

Publisher:

Public Library of Science

Language:

English

Submitter:

Susanne Agnes Lerch

Date Deposited:

06 Jul 2017 08:01

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:03

Publisher DOI:

10.1371/journal.pntd.0004649

PubMed ID:

27115351

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.96248

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/96248

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