"Government Data Vastly Undercounts India's Rabies Deaths"
Rabies
a vaccine-preventable viral disease attacking the central nervous system, almost always fatal once symptoms appear
IDSP-IHIP
the NCDC's real-time platform for reporting disease outbreaks and deaths under the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme
Rabies is a vaccine-preventable viral disease that attacks the central nervous system and is almost always fatal once symptoms appear, with infected dog bites causing most human transmission. The World Health Organization estimates that domestic dogs cause up to 99% of human rabies transmission, and that rabies kills about 59,000 people globally every year, with over 95% of these deaths occurring in Africa and Asia. India alone is estimated to account for roughly 35% of the world's rabies deaths and nearly 60% of Asia's burden, placing it at the centre of the WHO-led global target of zero human dog-mediated rabies deaths by 2030, a goal India has adopted through its own National Action Plan for Dog-Mediated Rabies Elimination.
Controlling rabies in India depends on two linked interventions: mass vaccination of dogs to break the transmission chain, and timely Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) for anyone bitten, consisting of a multi-dose anti-rabies vaccine course and, for higher-risk wounds, rabies immunoglobulin. Delivering both requires coordination across Health Ministries, local bodies and Animal Husbandry departments, an approach increasingly described as the One Health framework, which treats human, animal and environmental health as interconnected. A persistent weak link is that rabies has not yet been made a uniformly notifiable disease across the country; States have only been asked to notify it under their own legislation, leaving gaps in how deaths actually get counted nationally.
India runs two separate official systems for counting rabies deaths, and both undercount the true toll. The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme's Integrated Health Information Platform (IDSP-IHIP), run by the National Centre for Disease Control, tracks disease reports from the health system in near real time. The Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD) system, maintained by the Registrar General of India through the civil registration framework, instead certifies the medical cause for registered deaths, but covers only about 22% of all registered deaths nationally, since most deaths in India are never medically certified.
Because these two systems measure different things through different channels with different coverage, they are not directly comparable, and neither claims to be a complete national count. …
Consider the following diseases:
1.Diphtheria
2.Chickenpox
3.Smallpox
Which of the above diseases has/have been eradicated in India?
With reference to India's rabies burden and elimination strategy, consider the following statements:
1.India accounts for roughly one-third of the world's rabies deaths.
2.Rabies has been declared a nationally notifiable disease under a uniform central law applicable to all States.
3.India has committed to eliminating dog-mediated human rabies deaths by 2030.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Consider the following statements regarding rabies:
1.Rabies is caused by a bacterium transmitted mainly through contaminated water.
2.The World Health Organization estimates that domestic dogs are responsible for up to 99% of human rabies transmission.
3.Rabies is almost invariably fatal once clinical symptoms appear.
How many of the above statements are correct?
Which one of the following diseases has actually been eradicated in India?
Match List-I (System/Study related to rabies mortality data in India) with List-II (its defining feature) and select the correct answer using the codes given below:
List-I:
A.IDSP-IHIP
B.MCCD
C.ICMR-NIE Lancet study
List-II:
1.Modelled estimate derived from household surveys and decision-tree analysis
2.Civil registration-based medical certification of cause of death
3.Real-time disease surveillance platform under the National Centre for Disease Control
Consider the following statements regarding Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) for rabies:
1.PEP includes a course of anti-rabies vaccination.
2.Rabies immunoglobulin is recommended only for high-risk (Category III) bite wounds.
3.A single dose of anti-rabies vaccine is sufficient to confer complete protection.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
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