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BY OUR PHARMA CORRESPONDENT
12th August 2005: As the increase in the wildlife rabies threatened to cross borders, Germany has recently tightened its vaccination strategy. France, one of its neighboring countries, had severely criticized Germany for its apparent inaction in containing the spread of rabies.
The country experienced a surge in rabies cases in the last quarter of last year and first quarter of this year, causing fear in neighboring France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, each of which had succeeded in eradicating wildlife rabies in recent years.
Germany's National Reference Laboratory for Rabies, based at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute's Federal Research Institute for Animal Health expressed hope that the planned vaccination efforts might result in the eradication of rabies in Germany.
According to the World Health Organization's Rabies Bulletin, Europe, in the last quarter of 2004, there were 23 cases of rabies (16 foxes, 3 roe deer, 4 bats) reported in Germany, up from 15 (7 foxes, 1 badger, 7 bats) the previous quarter. In the first quarter of this year, 25 cases (1 horse, 1 roe deer, 23 foxes) were reported, and in the second quarter only 11 cases (2 bats, 9 foxes) were reported.
The rabies cases in the second quarter of this year exclusively occurred in the hot spot areas in the border area between Hesse and Rhineland Palatinate. France and the other western neighboring countries were and still are outside the danger zone, Germany's National Reference Laboratory for Rabies said.
Earlier, Germany focused its vaccination efforts on relatively low fox densities in rural settings, although the disease in Germany had moved to suburban and urban areas with very high fox densities. "This is a phenomenon no other country in Europe was confronted with," it noted.
In early May, Florence Cliquet, director of the rabies laboratory of Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments in Nancy, suggested that Germany had failed to adapt its control efforts to recommendations for oral vaccinations of foxes issued in 2002 by the European Union. She said: "From my point of view, the tools, the means, are available to combat rabies. Probably Germany does not use the tools very well."
He said a lack of cooperation between state rabies agencies had also been a problem, but since the beginning of the year the National Reference Laboratory for Rabies at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute has been "much more deeply involved in the planning, management, and evaluation of the vaccination campaigns than before." All involved agencies now meet every six months under the auspices of the National Reference Laboratory for Rabies.
BY OUR PHARMA CORRESPONDENT
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