Penn One Health in Latin America: Technology-aided strategies to prevent dog-mediated human rabies

A multidisciplinary team of faculty and students from Penn Medicine, Penn Vet and the Wharton School are partnering with Peruvian scientists to develop new strategies to fight dog rabies in Peru. In in most Latin American countries with mass dog vaccination campaigns, dog rabies has been controlled. However, the vaccination coverage of these official campaigns has decreased in some areas, enabling the introduction of the rabies virus in areas previously under control. In areas affected by urban rabies, free-roaming dogs are the main reservoirs. In this context, the behavior and distribution of free-roaming dogs are affected by the complex landscapes of cities, with structures influencing dogs' ecology, vaccination coverage, and ultimately rabies virus transmission. GPS tracking of dogs will allow researchers to remotely observe the movement of animals within a growing city, suffering a rabies outbreak to understand the influence of city structures on the transmission of infectious diseases. Through computational algorithms, the Penn team will develop optimized vaccination strategies to increase coverage. By integrating the study of human health, animal health and the urban environment, the Penn and Peruvian teams are applying the One Health approach to tackle an emergent and persistent public health problem.