Factors Lowering Levels of Rabies Vaccination: A case of Kibaha Town District of Tanzania

A study was conducted in Kibaha Town Council of Pwani Region of Tanzania to survey the probable factors that negatively affected the anti-rabies vaccinations leading to low percent coverage in some selected wards. The data used in this study were gathered from households keeping dogs and cats and institutions, using a semi-structured questionnaire and interviews. Another set of data was the record of the rabies control programme at the district veterinary office. Analysis of the data was done using SPSS.16, Microsoft Excel 2007 and EpiInfoTM7. The enquiry instrument centred on three main fields, namely, knowledge of respondents about rabies, responsible dog ownership and their perception of issues pertaining to the conduct of the rabies control programme. The results showed that the last round of vaccination covered dogs for 57% of the sampled households in the selected wards. A huge percentage of the respondents (64%) kept the wrong perception that clinical rabies could be cured. Only 34% of the respondents indicated that they had been taught about rabies in a WHO project area. It was also learnt that there was an outbreak of rabies in the district after 2 years of consecutively vaccinating the dogs in the area. The Chi- square test for linear trends showed very highly significant statistical differences in the progression of numbers of dogs vaccinated over the years (p<0.05; = 0.0000). This study concludes that, lack of sufficient knowledge on rabies and negative attitude towards the control programme were the biggest drawbacks on the vaccination coverage.