Low-Cost Animal Rabies Vaccination Clinics in Maryland Facilitate Access to Rabies Vaccination for Pets.

Abstract

Rabies is a zoonotic disease that poses a serious public health risk. To facilitate pet owner compliance with statewide mandatory animal rabies immunization requirements, Maryland statute requires Maryland's local health departments to conduct low-cost animal rabies vaccination clinics at least twice per year. We describe the outputs of these public low-cost clinics by documenting the number of animals vaccinated, number of clinics held annually, and cost per vaccine to pet owners for the years 2015-2016. These data are compared with clinic data from 2006 to 2008, providing insight into changes that have occurred in the decade interval between the surveys and consequently informing future clinic policies and procedures. The Maryland low-cost rabies clinic model allows for the vaccination of roughly 20,000 pet animals per year, representing ∼1% of the Maryland pet population, and can be adopted by other states to allow for more comprehensive rabies vaccination coverage in other regions of the country.