The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) stated that the Council of Agriculture hosted the “Joint Expert Consultation Meeting on Animal and Human Rabies Prevention and Control” on August 14, 2013 to gather comments from experts in all fields, including medicine, veterinary medicine, epidemiology and wild animals, as well as personnel from local animal epidemic prevention agencies and discuss seven major issues, including the ongoing rabies outbreak in animals and the related disease control and prevention strategies. The meeting was successfully concluded. Several definitive conclusions were reached and various recommendations were made, which will serve as a reference for developing government disease control policies, and they are as follows:

1. Current rabies situation and relevant disease control and prevention strategies: Intensify proactive rabies surveillance activities of wild animals. Assess the risk of interspecies transmission. Increase rabies vaccination coverage among cats and dogs, especially those in areas at increased risk for rabies and where ferret-badgers are present. Offer free rabies vaccination services to vaccinate cats and dogs at local animal epidemic prevention agencies to limit rabies cases to the mountainous areas.

2. Analysis of rabies transmission among wild animals: Conduct studies on distribution, density, habits, rabies prevalence of ferret-badger populations and assess the risk of cross-species transmission to provide a reference for developing disease control and prevention strategies. In addition, the medical and veterinary communities should work together to conduct surveillance for other zoonoses among wild animals.

3. Management of and caring for stray cats and dogs: Properly plan and implement the management of and caring for stray cats and dogs, training of personnel, vaccination of the animals in the shelter, and integration of volunteers, as well as reinforce responsible pet owner education and pet registration in order to effectively control the rabies situation.

4. Evaluation and analysis of oral rabies immunization: Integrate proactive rabies surveillance activities of wild animals with the evaluation and analysis of oral rabies immunization. Conduct studies on the palatability, dosage, safety, and efficacy of the oral vaccine to ferret-badgers and studies on the safety of the vaccine to other animals and humans. In addition, conduct studies on the quantity of the oral vaccines to be administered, vaccination areas, and the time for administration of the oral vaccine and analyze the potential environmental effects of implementing an oral rabies vaccination program. The results of these studies and analyses will serve as a reference for developing policies for oral rabies immunization of wild animals.

5. Role of house shrews in rabies transmission: At the moment, only 1 of the 59 specimens collected from house shrews tested positive for rabies virus. According to literature, there is no evidence for rabies transmission among house shrews. Hence, the role of house shrews in rabies transmission is insignificant.

6. Rabies diagnostic procedures and methods: It is recommended to properly formulate diagnostic procedures, increase rabies testing capacity, speed up laboratory testing for rabies diagnosis, reduce burden on laboratory personnel, and include veterinary and other related research units in the development of rabies diagnostic capacity.

7. It is recommended that CECC allocate budget for facilitating the implementation of various disease control and prevention efforts and provide budget and human resources to the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, the Animal Health Research Institute and local animal epidemic prevention agencies for implementing disease control and prevention efforts

Simultaneously, CECC will continue to promote rabies awareness, rabies vaccination of cats and dogs, and management and rabies vaccination of stray animals in the shelter in order to prevent transmission of rabies from animals to humans.