COVID-19 is just one of many zoonotic diseases thought to have spread from bats to humans. Now, more than ever, we need to find ways of preventing the ‘spillover’ of harmful viruses from the animal kingdom. The solution might come from studying one of humanity’s ancient killers, rabies.

Rabies virus is a preventable but fatal viral disease that is most commonly transmitted through the bite of an infected animal. Common vampire bat-transmitted rabies is almost always fatal in mammals, including humans, with bat-to-human rabies transmission surpassing dog-to-human transmission in most areas where these bats occur in North, Central, and South America. While the number of human rabies cases have dramatically declined over the last 35 years, mortality from bat-transmitted rabies is estimated to cause economic losses of over $30 million US dollars per year across Latin America, a burden that largely falls on rural communities, where the cost of control measures such as prophylactic vaccination of livestock often cannot be met.  

Work by the Streicker lab at the CVR aims to alleviate this burden. These projects include methods to improve our understanding of bat ecology and its effects on disease transmission, supporting national rabies surveillance programmes to routinise viral sequencing, epidemiological investigations and predictions of rabies transmission patterns, and work on transmissible and transferrable vaccines (vaccines to protect against rabies that are able to spread between bats). This exciting work can support rabies programme managers to reduce the health and economic burden of rabies within Latin America by directing or reshaping control efforts, but only if these stakeholders are engaged with the research.

Current control measures for vampire bat rabies are limited. There is no effective vaccine to reduce circulation in the bat reservoir, meaning culling of vampire bats and vaccination of animals at risk of catching rabies are the primary controls. Within communities, there is often a strong negative feeling towards bats and a reluctance to try control measures other than culling. However inappropriately timedd culling of vampire bats has been shown to risk increasing rabies virus transmission. Vaccination is a fully effective control method but is often under-utilised and does not reduce the long-term presence of rabies risk. Several ongoing projects in the Streicker lab currently investigate ways in which rabies virus can be controlled without the culling of vampire bats, and how vaccination could be targeted more strategically. However, changes from the norm require those most affected by rabies, local communities, to be informed and engaged for any impact to be seen.

It is imperative for us to improve education and understanding of vampire bats and their role in rabies transmission within local communities. Therefore, this project aims to understand the Knowledge Attitudes and Practices (KAP) of local farmers towards bats and their role in transmitting infection, and the barriers surrounding disease control, which will allow local stakeholders, such as SENASA (National Animal Health Service) to update their rabies awareness campaigns supported by a more empowered and aware community.

This project will act as a foundation for engagement surrounding other work from the Streicker lab, such as the development of new control measures including transferable and transmissible vaccines, for which community awareness and engagement will be pivotal.

This project will deliver a community survey with farmers in Costa Rica and focus groups with community leaders and ministerial staff to identify barriers towards rabies control and prevention and the development of resources to improve rabies communication and engagement.