Abstract:
Rabies is a fatal encephalitic disease caused by lyssaviruses belonging to the family Rhabdoviridae.
At the time of this report, a total of 16 species of lyssaviruses, which included the prototype rabies
virus (RABV), and 2 related but unclassified bat lyssaviruses, Taiwan and Kothalati, had been
recognised by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV 2019). Globally RABV,
also referred to as ‘classic rabies’, circulates in natural transmission cycles involving domestic
dogs and various wildlife species. In the Americas, RABV is found in certain insectivorous and
haematophagous bat species (Banyard et al. 2013). The public health burden of rabies is, however,
very closely related to the occurrence of the disease in domestic dogs; thus, human cases of rabies
are mostly reported from areas where dog rabies is uncontrolled (Hampson et al. 2015). An annual
estimation of 59 000 human deaths occur worldwide with 95% of rabies cases occurring in Africa
and Asia (Hampson et al. 2015). In South Africa, RABV circulates both in domestic animals and
wildlife cycles, involving the canid and mongoose variants of the virus (Nel, Thomson & Von
Teichman 1993). The urban cycle involves domestic dogs reported from various locations in the
country, but particularly from the KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga
provinces (Cohen et al. 2007; Zulu, Sabeta & Nel 2009). Sylvatic cycles of the canid variant RABV
in bat-eared foxes and black-backed jackal (Zulu et al. 2009) and the mongoose variant RABV in
certain species of mongoose occur in South Africa (Van Zyl, Markotter & Nel 2010). Apart from
the reservoir species, canid and mongoose RABV infections are reported in an array of domestic
and wildlife species in the country, with these animals primarily serving as dead-end hosts (Sabeta
et al. 2018). Laboratory-confirmed human rabies cases in South Africa are predominantly dogmediated,
and seven cases of rabies linked to other domestic species and wildlife have been
reported (Weyer et al. 2011).
