RESEARCH ARTICLE Overview of Animal Rabies in Kinshasa Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo Augustin Tshibwabwa Twabela1*, Aaron Simanyengwe Mweene2☯, Justin Mulumbu Masumu1,3☯, John Bwalya Muma2☯, Boniface Pongombo Lombe1,3‡, Careen Hankanga2‡ 1 Veterinary Laboratory of Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, 2 School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia, 3 Université Pédagogique National, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. ‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work *
[email protected] Abstract OPEN ACCESS Introduction Citation: Twabela AT, Mweene AS, Masumu JM, Rabies is one of the major public health problems mostly affecting developing countries in Muma JB, Lombe BP, Hankanga C (2016) Overview of Animal Rabies in Kinshasa Province in the Africa and Asia where 99.9% of all rabies related human deaths are recorded each year. In Democratic Republic of Congo. PLoS ONE 11(4): Democratic Republic of Congo, repeated outbreaks have been reported. Despite this, there e0150403. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150403 is little reliable epidemiological data about rabies in the country for the development of effec- Editor: Matthias Johannes Schnell, Thomas tive control strategies. Jefferson University, UNITED STATES Received: November 26, 2015 Materials and Methods Accepted: February 12, 2016 A retrospective study was carried out in Kinshasa Province during a period of five years Published: April 7, 2016 (2009–2013) to describe the proportion of rabid animals and the species involved in rabies Copyright: © 2016 Twabela et al. This is an open transmission and maintenance. The survey also aimed at describing the spatial-temporal access article distributed under the terms of the distribution of rabies.