Terrestrial rabies eliminated in Croatia – a historical overview

Abstract

: Rabies is an ancient disease, known worldwide for a thousand years. Nowadays, vast areas of Western and Central Europe have been freed from rabies. To mark the expectation that Croatia will be officially declared free of classical terrestrial rabies by 2020, this paper was written to present a historical overview of the epidemiological characteristics of rabies in Croatia, based on literature data. Rabies in humans and animals was described in the 19 th century on the Croatian territory as a significant public health problem. It caused considerable human and animal death. One of the oldest report of rabies in Croatia is dated in 1783, when two people from the city of Šibenik were bitten by a rabid cat and a rabid dog. Epidemics of rabies that were spread by packs of stray dogs prompted the state authorities in the second half of the 19 th century to control the movements of these dogs. The first announce-ment of taxes on dogs in Croatia was recorded in 1857. However, it was introduced as early as January 1 st , 1867. The first campaign of preventive dog vaccination by a phenol vaccine prepared from virus fixé, was performed in 1933. Dog vaccination and strict control measures resulted in the reduction of dog-mediated rabies cases to zero in the whole of Croatia in 1967. Ten years later, the first cases of sylvatic rabies in Croatia were detected in three foxes. By the end of 1986 rabies was found in the whole territory of Croatia apart from Dubrovnik and the islands. Introduction of oral vaccination of foxes throughout the whole Croatian territory in 2011, resulted in the rapid decrease of rabies cases in animals to zero in 2014. Recent studies have been focused on rabies in bats. Neutralizing antibodies against the European bat lyssavirus-1 were detected in bats which proves that the bat population in Croatia was in contact with the virus.