WVS Data Collection App

Technology - aided rabies campaign management

Rabies vaccination campaigns often bring together many people across multiple organisations to vaccinate a large number of animals over a short period of time. One of the most challenging aspects of these campaigns is efficient coordination of vaccination teams in unfamiliar working areas. The WVS App enables project managers to coordinate remote teams entirely through the platform.

Spatial team management

The WVS App contains integrated maps which rabies teams can use to navigate through the region they are vaccinating in. In addition, project managers can upload pre-planned vaccination zones for each team to operate within, ensuring that an area is covered systematically, without team overlap. New vaccination zones can be assigned to individual teams as they progress through the project area, allowing a project manager to guide teams in real-time.

Case examples - Malawi, Goa, Haiti

Malawi

In 2012, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre reported the highest number of paediatric rabies deaths from a single institution across the whole of Africa¹. Since our initial campaign in 2015, the hospital has witnessed a dramatic decrease in such cases².

Since implementation of our rabies elimination program the WVS Data Collection App has been used to:

• Vaccinate over 90,000 dogs against rabies every year since 2016
• Develop a method of achieving 70% coverage with static point only vaccination clinics - improving efficiency and saving time and resources³.
• Implement a robust rabies surveillance system ensuring rapid response and reporting of suspected rabies cases before the virus spreads.
• Provide life-saving rabies education lessons - reaching over 1 million children across Southern Malawi.

Due to the success of our program in Blantyre, we have been able to protect more communities by expanding the work further into 3 surrounding districts. All the above work wouldn't be possible without the WVS Data Collection App.

1. Depani S, Mallewa M, Molyneux EM. World Rabies Day: Evidence of rise in paediatric rabies cases in Malawi World Rabies Day: paediatric rabies cases in Malawi. Lancet. 2012;380(9848):1148. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61668-7
2. Zimmer BL, Gamble L, Mayer D, Foster R, Langton J. Canine rabies vaccination reduces child rabies cases in Malawi. Lancet. 2018;392(10153):1115-1116. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32175-5
3. Mazeri S, Gibson AD, Meunier N, et al. Barriers of attendance to dog rabies static point vaccination clinics in Blantyre, Malawi. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2018;12(1):e0006159.

Goa

In 2021, Goa State was declared India's very first "Rabies Controlled Area" with no human rabies deaths since October 2017. This achievement is the result of over 8 years of vaccination, education, surveillance and research, all coordinated through and recorded on the WVS Data Collection App.

This project relies on both hand catching and net catching of stray, community and owned dogs. The mapping function of the WVS App has been integral to how the project runs. Teams of dog catchers and vaccinators move systematically across Goa State, using working zones in the WVS App to navigate through the region. Every animal vaccinated receives a data entry in the WVS App which is associated with the exact GPS location. This means that maps such as the one in figure 1 can be produced to visualise the canine rabies vaccination progress.

Map of GPS locations of dog vaccination records in 2021, showing coverage throughout the state.

In addition to its use in canine rabies vaccination, the WVS App has been used to:

• Collect data to estimate the total vaccination coverage and dog population of Goa State
• Coordinate a rabies education campaign which has delivered life-saving lessons to over 1 million children across Goa State since 2014
• Record the details of all calls to the state-wide rabies hotline number

Haiti

The Ministry of Agriculture in Haiti has been leading rabies control in the country, with the assistance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 2013. Despite vaccinating between 100,000 and 120,000 dogs across the country every year, a project evaluation in 2015 found that only 45% vaccination coverage was able to be reached¹.

In 2017, the WVS App was brought in as the data collection tool for the National campaign. In 2017 alone over 250,000 vaccinations were recorded, and most importantly the project achieved over 70% vaccination coverage for the first time.

The use of the WVS App for project coordination and its effect on vaccination coverage was quantified in a 2021 journal article where 2 cities were vaccinated using either 'traditional' or 'technology-aided' vaccination methods. The technology-aided approach achieved an estimated 80% vaccination coverage compared to the 44% of the traditional approach².

The vaccination work is combined with use of the Rabies Epidemiology And Case Tracking (REACT) App to coordinate an Integrated Bite Case Management (IBCM) surveillance program and this has led an over 75% reduction in human rabies deaths in Haiti³.

1. Wallace R, Etheart M, Ludder F, et al. The Health Impact of Rabies in Haiti and Recent Developments on the Path Toward Elimination, 2010-2015. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2017;97(4_Suppl):76-83. doi:10.4269/ajtmh.16-0647
2. Monroe B, Ludder F, Dilius P, et al. Every Dog Has Its Data: Evaluation of a Technology-Aided Canine Rabies Vaccination Campaign to Implement a Microplanning Approach. Front Public Health. 2021;9:757668. Published 2021 Nov 1. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.757668
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID), Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology (DHCPP), Rabies in Haiti, World Rabies Day, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017, Accessed 21/03/2022 from
   https://www.cdc.gov/worldrabiesday/haiti.html#:~:text=The%20IBCM%20program%20resulted%20in,human%20rabies%20deaths%20in%20Haiti