Risk of rabies reintroduction into the European Union as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian war: A quantitative disease risk analysis.

AIMS: The importation of rabid animals poses a continual threat to rabies freedom in the European Union (EU). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Commission eased the rules on companion animal importations for Ukrainian refugees through derogations to the EU Pet Travel Scheme (EU PETS). As Ukraine remains endemic for canine rabies, this paper aimed to quantitatively assess whether the change in regulations affected the risk of rabies introduction to the EU. METHOD AND RESULTS: Transmission pathways for both EU PETS and derogations to this scheme were considered, as well as the scenarios of 100% compliance and reduced compliance within both schemes. Stochastic modelling was performed via a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the median and 95% confidence intervals of the annual risk of rabies entry and the years between rabies entries into the EU. Following 100% compliance, the derogation scheme posed a significantly lower risk at a value of 3.63 × 10-3 (CI 95% 1.18 × 10-3-9.34 × 10-3) rabies entries per year in comparison to EU PETS where the risk was 4.25 × 10-2 (CI 95% 1.44 × 10-2-9.81 × 10-2). Despite a significantly lower risk as compared to EU PETS under 100% compliance, the derogation scheme was more sensitive to a reduction in compliance which resulted in a 74-fold increase in risk. Given this, even under reduced compliance, the annual risk remained lower under the derogation scheme, although this was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggest that a 4-month period of quarantine, as modelled for the derogation scenario, could reduce the annual risk of rabies entry. This scheme may present a viable solution for the management of companion animal influxes in future crises.

Neglected and endemic zoonoses.

Endemic zoonoses are found throughout the developing world, wherever people live in close proximity to their animals, affecting not only the health of poor people but often also their livelihoods through the health of their livestock. Unlike newly emerging zoonoses that attract the attention of the developed world, these endemic zoonoses are by comparison neglected. This is, in part, a consequence of under-reporting, resulting in underestimation of their global burden, which in turn artificially downgrades their importance in the eyes of administrators and funding agencies. The development of cheap and effective vaccines is no guarantee that these endemic diseases will be eliminated in the near future. However, simply increasing awareness about their causes and how they may be prevented-often with very simple technologies-could reduce the incidence of many endemic zoonoses. Sustainable control of zoonoses is reliant on surveillance, but, as with other public-sector animal health services, this is rarely implemented in the developing world, not least because of the lack of sufficiently cheap diagnostics. Public-private partnerships have already provided advocacy for human disease control and could be equally effective in addressing endemic zoonoses.

Human brucellosis in urban and peri-urban areas of Kampala, Uganda.

A retrospective case-control study of human brucellosis in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas in Kampala, Uganda was undertaken to find the risks associated with the disease using the medical records of Mulago National Referral Hospital (Mulago Hospital). From the Brucella agglutination test (BAT) records between June 2004 and May 2006, 652 positive results were found. The case-control study showed that living in urban areas was a risk factor for brucellosis. The numbers of improved and cross-breed cattle per 1000 households were calculated on the basis of data obtained from interviews of 75 randomly selected local councils (LCls) in an area between 5 and 20 km radii from the city center of Kampala. Cattle-keeping activities were, however, unpopular in urban areas compared to peri-urban and rural areas. Poor correlation between the distribution of human brucellosis cases and the distribution of cattle suggested that most of the brucellosis cases resulted from consumption of raw milk transported from peri-urban and rural areas of Kampala and/or dairy production areas outside Kampala.