Data-driven approaches for rabies elimination

Rabies kills thousands of people every year despite vaccines that can prevent human infections and interrupt transmission in reservoir populations. Global efforts are at last mobilizing to eliminate human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030, but weak surveillance is an enduring challenge leading to ineffective vaccine targeting that threatens progress towards this goal. I aim to accelerate rabies elimination by developing cutting-edge surveillance approaches to detect and track circulating infection and transform the implementation of rabies control and prevention. In settings representative of challenges on the path to elimination (East Africa, Philippines, Peru), we will adaptively co-design and test interventions to determine how best to improve human rabies vaccine provisioning, and target and coordinate dog vaccination, guided by enhanced surveillance. This embedded collaborative research will bring immediate public health benefits as well as transferable lessons and best practice, building political, programmatic and public support to achieve and sustain rabies freedom.