Rabies in South Africa

This report, covering the two year period 1997 to 1998, is an update of previous reports published in the Proceedings of SEARG meetings which took place in Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya. The overall rabies situation in South Africa has changed very little and the disease remains endemic throughout the country. Four major vectors have been identified, namely the domestic dog, the yellow mongoose, the black-backed jackal and the bat-eared fox. Two strains of the rabies virus have been identified on the basis of monoclonal antibody typing and gene sequencing, namely the canid and viverrid types. Canine rabies is still largely confined to three provinces on the east coast of South Africa, namely Kwazulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape, where nearly all cases of human rabies are reported. The sylvatic form of rabies is largely dictated by the distribution of the three wild animal vectors (Figure 1). Five isolations of Mokola virus were made from cats in Kwazulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape during the period 1996 to 1997.