Contact Person: Filipe Maximiano
Duration: 2022 - 2023
Rabies is a zoonotic disease that is almost always fatal after the onset of the first clinical symptoms and claims the lives of about 59,000 people each year - most of them in low- and middle-income countries. An estimated 99% of human cases are caused by dog bites. Because mass dog vaccination is not feasible everywhere, it may be helpful to explore other strategies that have the potential to reduce the burden of human rabies. Improving people's knowledge of rabies may be one potential way to reduce exposure to the disease. This would be particularly urgent in populations that know less about rabies and practices to prevent the disease in countries with endemic rabies. One approach might be to try to identify factors in people that correlate with lower rabies knowledge. This would allow targeted education and awareness campaigns and reduce exposure.
The objective of this scoping review is to review the literature on quantitative and qualitative studies conducted between 2000 and 2021 to provide a descriptive overview of factors associated with varying levels of knowledge and practices in the management of dog bite wounds in endemic rabies countries and to map the questions used to assess population knowledge by geographic location.
