2008 North American Rabies Management Plan A Partnership for Effective Management Signature Page North American Rabies Plan The prevention and control of rabies in North America is a significant challenge. Rabies is an acute, fatal viral disease of mammals most often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal resulting in impacts to public health, agriculture, and wildlife. Rabies costs governments and the people of North America hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The North American Rabies Management Plan (NARMP) establishes a protocol for rabies management in North America by assessing and defining the needs, priorities, and strategies required to control and eventually eliminate terrestrial rabies and to determine methods for bat rabies management. Despite remarkable precedents and achievements in the rabies management field, greater accomplishments are possible through trilateral cooperation. The establishment of a NARMP represents a key step in facilitating a planning processes by which mutual border rabies control and prevention goals and objectives can be identified and better met among Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The plan is designed to provide direction and serve as a catalyst for collaborative rabies management actions at the continental level. Key components of this plan include routine communications on policies and rabies status, exchange of scientific and technical information, and collaboration on surveillance and control projects along the immediate borders of the three countries. The ultimate function of the plan is to provide a framework and forum for constructive interaction among the states and provinces and federal levels of Canada, Mexico, and the United States to address challenges jointly and, thus, better ensure that long-term rabies management goals are met within each country and in North America. CANADA ____________________________________________________ ______________ Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) Date ____________________________________________________ ______________ Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) Date MEXICO ____________________________________________________ ______________ Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) Date ____________________________________________________ ______________ Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) Date National Service for Health, Safety and Quality Food (SENASICA) ____________________________________________________ ______________ Ministry of Health (SALUD) Date National Center of Epidemiology Surveillance and Disease Control (CENAVECE) THE NAVAJO NATION ___________________________________________ __________ ______________ The Navajo Nation Date UNITED STATES ___________________________________________ __________ ______________ Health and Human Services (HHS) Date Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) _____________________________________________________ ______________ United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Date Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) 1 Table of Contents I. Executive Summary II. National Overviews • Canada • United States • Mexico III. Preface • Intentions for preparing a plan • Goals, priorities, and strategies • Commitment to the plan • Plan architects: Team membership and chairs IV. Introduction • Background of rabies in North America • Public health importance of rabies • Impacts to agriculture and wildlife • Need for coordinated rabies management in North America • Visions/Objectives/Goals • Laboratory diagnostic capability and support • Methods V. Joint International Ventures • Implementation of international cooperative venture • Commitment by Plan partners VI. Increasing Our Scientific Base • Commitment to expand scientific information to close critical data gaps • Enhance laboratory and field rabies diagnostic methods • Collaborate in research to improve the international rabies management program and ensure that future management decisions are well informed • Integrate the contemporary scientific findings into applied management practices VII. Challenges • Strive to implement cost-effective plan of actions • Seek multiple sources of funding to meet plan goals • Ensure adequate laboratory support • Maintain and expand partnerships • Develop effective liaisons among participating countries and across various sectors of government and other interested entities • Monitor and address emerging social, economic, and environmental trends that affect the management of rabies • Continue to review plan accomplishments and address deficiencies VIII. Looking Forward • Vision for the futureture IIX.X. Acknowledgements X. References 2 I. Executive Summary The prevention and control of rabies in North America is a significant challenge. Rabies is an acute, fatal viral disease of mammals most often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal and impacts public health, agriculture, and wildlife. Rabies costs governments and the people of North America hundreds of millions of dollars each year for diagnosis, investigation of animal bites, treatment of humans who have come into contact with rabid animals, compensation for loss of livestock, quarantine, research, vaccination, maintenance of rabies laboratories, and animal control programs. In addition, each year tens of thousands of people are impacted by anxiety, fear, and trauma associated with potential or actual rabies exposure to themselves and their domestic animals. Despite implementation of aggressive rabies management strategies in many countries, rabies still results in 50,000 to 70,000 human deaths mostly in developing countries around the world. The number of human rabies deaths in North America has continued to decline as dog rabies has been brought under control and in some cases eliminated. Today, human cases in North America are often due to exposure to variants of wildlife rabies, underscoring the need for increasing emphasis on wildlife rabies surveillance and control. Moreover, effective wildlife rabies control is recognized as an integral component to break the cycle of canine rabies spillover into wildlife, particularly wild canids, a factor that could inhibit elimination of this key variant. In North America, rabies persists in several terrestrial meso-carnivore species and bats. Specific variants of the rabies virus are adapted to species as well as specific geographic areas. The wildlife species most commonly confirmed with rabies include skunks (primarily Mephitis mephitis), raccoons (Procyon lotor), foxes (Vulpes vulpes and Urocyon cinereoargenteus), coyotes (Canis latrans), and bats (Chiroptera). Also, rabies transmission by vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) is an important public health and economic concern in Mexico and much of Latin America. Varying ecological, behavioral and biological attributes of diverse meso-carnivore and bat reservoir species introduce new challenges to contemporary rabies control programs that underscore the need for interdisciplinary collaboration among wildlife professionals, veterinarians, physicians, public affairs specialists, environmental compliance experts, economists, and others. Given the broad distribution of many of these reservoir species in North America, it follows that rabies impacts may occur locally, at the state level, regionally, nationally, or internationally. Rabies vaccination of pets and livestock integrated with education programs and regulatory measures have led to greatly diminished numbers of rabies cases in domestic animals in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Successful programs to prevent rabies in humans and domestic animals have spotlighted the need for a more aggressive approach to manage rabies in wildlife reservoirs as an adjunct to traditional and innovative public health and agriculture initiatives. Wildlife rabies management goals in North America are shaped by low human rabies mortality and high social and financial costs associated with coexistence with specific rabies variants. Rabies management goals for wildlife are also dependent on the availability of safe and effective oral vaccines as well as economical bait-vaccine prices, the single highest cost in oral rabies vaccination (ORV) programs. Local, state, provincial or federal rabies management initiatives are being implemented in all three North American countries. Each country is moving 3 toward greater involvement of stakeholders, increased information sharing across borders, and is involved with research, planning, and direct actions for managing rabies. ORV has increasingly become an integral adjunct to conventional rabies prevention and control in Canada and the U.S. International cooperation, coordination, and collaboration among countries with common borders are essential for attaining the rabies management goals of containment and regional elimination of specific rabies virus variants. Cooperative rabies management through enhanced surveillance, coordinated ORV, use of natural and man-made barriers, and contingency actions is currently in place in several states and provinces in both the U.S. and Canada. Mexico has embarked on successful urban dog and cat rabies control within its states through mass vaccination campaigns, initiated enhanced rabies surveillance along the Mexican-U.S. border, and implemented vampire bat population control programs. Mexico embarked on an inaugural pilot ORV trial targeting difficult to vaccinate dogs in select towns and near landfills in 2008. In addition, several priorities have been identified