La rage animale : risques autochtones et d'importation, mesures à prendre

Rabies is a major zoonotic disease, which is always lethal, except extremely rare exceptions. The burden of rabies is estimated to be around 60 000 deaths per year by the World Health Organization. Within lyssaviruses, the RABV species is responsible for almost all cases, and dogs are the source of contamination for humans and other mammalian species in more than 98% of cases, especially in developing countries that are affected, whereas developed countries including France have eliminated canine rabies for nearly a century, based on a combination of vaccination and sanitary measures. This explains why no autochtonous human rabies case has been observed in mainland France since 1924. However, a human case occurred in French Guyana in 2008 due to the circulation of a desmodine variant of RABV among vampire bats. Some wild carnivores also play the role of reservoir hosts for RABV variants that have become adapted to them. In this context, France was infected by a fox variant from 1968 to 1998. The development of an oral rabies vaccination programme allowed France to become free from fox rabies. Today, the only animal cases caused by RABV that are notified in metropolitan France are linked to domestic carnivores that were incubating rabies at the moment they were illegally introduced into France. Among the other Lyssavirus species currently identified, six are currently recognized as being zoonotic. For the majority of them, Old World bats have been identified as reservoir hosts. In France, the European Bat Lyssavirus (EBLV-1) circulates in particular among serotine bats and two fatal feline cases have been described to date. Thus, great care should be taken towards rabies risks. Above all, it is necessary to scale-up the fight against this neglected zoonoses in those countries where rabies remains enzootic.