Challenges and Opportunities for Raccoon Oral Rabies Vaccination and Public Health Campaigns in Urban Environments

Beginning in the late 1970s, a strain of rabies associated with raccoons (Procyon lotor) rapidly spread along the East coast of the United States, with many states reporting over 500 cases a year. Raccoon-strain rabies can infect companion animals, livestock, other wildlife and even humans, and raccoons are the major vector of this disease in Eastern North America. Urban areas provide ideal environments for the spread of zoonotic diseases such as rabies from wildlife to human and domestic animal species. At the end of 2007, Guilford County, NC, had the highest number of rabies positive wildlife cases per county in the state. Pet vaccination, wildlife vector management and public health education may well be the most efficient ways to prevent a rabies epidemic in an urban environment.;Human behaviors play a fundamental role in the epidemiology of urban wildlife diseases, and those behaviors are shaped by knowledge and ethnicity. Guilford County, and in particular the city of Greensboro, has a total population of 237,423, of which 15,412 are Hispanic/Latino and 88,587 are African American. Ethnic minorities, particularly Latinos, are growing in numbers throughout the U.S. and are becoming critically important for wildlife management and public health outreach programs. We evaluated knowledge of rabies, transmission routes, vector species, and response to rabies exposure with a bilingual (English/Spanish) in person survey in Greensboro, North Carolina. Ethnicity, gender and education level were predictors of rabies knowledge. Latinos and African Americans had less rabies knowledge than non-Latino Whites.;Non-Latino Whites and men had less rabies knowledge than women. Only 41% of African American respondents identified animal bites as a route of rabies transmission to humans, and less than half of all respondents knew that washing a bite wound with soap and water was useful prevention. Our knowledge scale was internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha = 0.73) and could be valuable for future studies of zoonotic disease knowledge. Future rabies educational campaigns should focus on developing culturally sensitive, language appropriate educational materials geared to minorities.;Guilford County also needed to assess the pet vaccination status and awareness of rabies vaccination clinics offered by the County. Furthermore, they needed to understand how the public would respond to rabid animals and how to deliver information about rabies and rabies clinics to them in the future. To address this need, we asked several outreach questions in addition to the knowledge questions as part of the initial bilingual (English/Spanish) survey of people residing in Greensboro, NC. Our results indicated that most pet owners report vaccinating their pet. Most Latinos were not aware of rabies vaccination clinics offered by the county and they preferred to obtain future rabies information through the radio and TV, as do African Americans. Most non-Latino whites were aware of the rabies clinics offered by the county and preferred to obtain future information through the internet.;The final aspect of controlling and eventually eradicating raccoon rabies from urban environments was to implement wildlife management measures that reduce the risk of rabies. Because raccoons are the most important rabies vector in eastern US, we developed a program for the control of rabies associated with raccoons in Greensboro, NC.;The U.S. Department of Agriculture - Wildlife Services has established the National Oral Rabies Vaccination (ORV) Program with the goal of limiting the westward expansion of raccoon rabies. In the ORV program, baits inoculated with rabies vaccination are distributed aerially. However, aerial vaccines are distributed primarily in rural areas where raccoon density is reported to be lower than in urban environments, aerial baiting limited effectiveness in urban/suburban environments. ORV baiting devices and the associated cost have not been extensively evaluated in urban environments. Additionally raccoon prevaccination serology is necessary to determine the prevalence of rabies virus neutralizing antibodies in raccoons before administering a rabies vaccine, and to accurately evaluate the effects of the oral vaccination in a specific population.;To determine efficacy and cost of baiting devices; the species attracted to the bait; and raccoon rabies titters pre ORV delivery, we established bait stations and trapping with trail cameras at 28 different locations within the city limits of Greensboro. We had 4 baiting and trapping periods to evaluate the effectiveness of the oral bait delivery stations and to obtain tissue samples from resident raccoons. Raccoons were captured in 83% of photographs and we observed raccoon activity in 27 out of 28 baiting stations. We sampled 80 unique raccoons and 3.6% of the samples were positive for rabies. Additionally we calculated that it would cost the city of Greensboro...