Citing the 30 percent uptick in human rabies deaths last year, Quezon City 4th district Rep. Marvin Rillo is pushing for the implementation of "more aggressive pet vaccination programs" in the country.

“We need more aggressive pet vaccination programs. We also have to improve treatment access to stem a bigger surge in human rabies deaths in the years ahead,” Rillo said in a statement Sunday, March 5.

“Right now, rabies already kills at least one Filipino each day,” the neophyte congressman noted.

A total of 370 human rabies deaths were reported in the country in 2022, up 30 percent from 284 in 2021, according to the Department of Health (DOH).

“Dogs are the main source of human rabies deaths” and contribute up to 99 percent of all transmissions to humans, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Philippines now has the highest dog ownership rate in Asia with, 67 percent of households keeping a dog, according to a survey by market researcher Rakuten.

Rillo also noted thar Filipinos filed a total of 79,925 in Animal Bite Treatment Package (ABTP) claims with the state-run Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth) in 2022, up nearly 40 percent from the 57,420 claims they made in 2021.

“The record high claims betray the surge in animal bites all over the country, and each bite represents a potential risk of rabies transmission,” the former Quezon City councilor said.

Rillo previously filed House Resolution (HR) No. 462, calling for a congressional inquiry into the “failed” National Rabies Prevention and Control Program that had originally sought “to eliminate human rabies in the Philippines by 2020".

The program, established by the Anti-Rabies Law of 2007, had also sought to declare the Philippines rabies-free by 2022.

Rabies is a vaccine-preventable zoonotic disease (communicable from animals to humans) mostly transmitted via an animal bite. It is virtually 100 percent fatal once clinical symptoms appear in humans, according to the WHO.