The local government of Antipolo City is now using a new system for the detection of rabies cases in the city.
Antipolo City Mayor Jun Ynares posted on Friday, Jan. 20, photos of the seminar held by the City Veterinary Office and City Health regarding the use of the Rabies Rapid Response with Rabies Data Share System (RaDSS) developed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Department of Agriculture - Bureau of Animal Industry (DA-BAI) for its project dubbed as "Establishment of the One Health Prevention and Treatment Network Model for the Elimination of Rabies in the Philippines", also known as the "Japan and Philippines One Health Rabies" (JAPOHR) Project.
Aside from the development of RaDSS, the agencies also introduced Immunochromatographic Test Kit (ICT Kit) for rabies which supports easy, fast, and accurate diagnosis of the disease.
According to JICA, rabies diagnosis take about 2-3 hours with the use of a microscope and an incubator in normal circumstances. With the new ICT kits, diagnosis is radically sped up to 20-30 minutes without the use of said equipment, accelerating detection and start of treatment.
Ynares said that RaDSS features real-time data sharing, rabies contact tracing, streamlined response case investigation, and containment procedures which further streamline the rabies detection and treatment capabilities of the city.
Rabies is a vaccine-preventable zoonotic disease (communicable from animals to humans) mostly transmitted through an animal bite.
According to the Department of Health (DOH) figures, a total of 322 Filipinos died of rabies from Jan. 1 to Nov. 5 last year compared to 235 over the same period in 2021. This is a surge of 37 percent.
The Anti-Rabies Law of 2007 established the National Rabies Prevention and Control Program (NRPCP) to control, prevent the spread of, and eventually eradicate human and animal rabies, and to promote responsible pet ownership.
DOH records show that rabies infections in the country, mostly due to unvaccinated dogs, has a case fatality rate of 100 percent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also considers rabies an extremely deadly disease, saying that “once clinical symptoms appear in humans, rabies is virtually 100 percent fatal”.