Abstract:
Rabies is a viral zoonosis that causes an estimated 59,000 preventable human fatalities
every year. While more than 120 countries remain endemic for dog-mediated rabies, the burden is
the highest in Africa and Asia where 99% of human rabies cases are caused by domestic dogs. One
such rabies-endemic country is South Africa where an estimated 42 preventable human deaths occur
every year. Although canine rabies had been well described for most of the provinces in South Africa,
the epidemiology of rabies within the NorthWest Province had not been well defined prior to this
investigation. As such, the aim of this study was to use nucleotide sequence analyses to characterise
the extant molecular epidemiology of rabies in the North West Province of South Africa—with
specific focus on the interface between dogs and sylvatic species. To this end, Rabies lyssavirus isolates
originating from the North West Province were subjected to molecular epidemiological analyses
relying on the Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo methodology on two distinct gene regions, viz.
the G-L intergenic region and partial nucleoprotein gene. Our results provided strong evidence in
support of an endemic cycle of canine rabies in the East of the province, and three independent
endemic cycles of sylvatic rabies spread throughout the province. Furthermore, evidence of specific
events of virus spill-over between co-habiting sylvatic species and domestic dogs was found. These
results suggest that the elimination of canine-mediated rabies from the province will rely not only on
eliminating the disease from the dog populations, but also from the co-habiting sylvatic populations
using oral rabies vaccination campaigns.