Notes

QCARD – Quezon City Alis Rabies Drive

The QCARD is a government-led program spearheaded by the Department of Agriculture- Bureau of Animal Industry (DA-BAI) and Quezon City (QC) through its City Veterinary Office (CVO).

Based on DA-BAI’s data, QC tops the list of cities/municipalities in the country (along with San Jose Del Monte City in the province of Bulacan) with the highest number of animal rabies cases with 24 rabies cases in 2015. As of September this year, they’ve already had 2 human rabies cases and 18 animal rabies cases.

Since DA-BAI is also located within the city, DA-BAI saw this as an opportunity to help out in the city’s rabies prevention and elimination program particularly with the mass dog vaccination activities. DA-BAI provided the vaccines and additional vaccinators while the CVO coordinated with the local officials down to the village level for information dissemination about the campaign. The city councilors assigned coordinators for each vaccination team and also provided meals and transportation. Meanwhile, the Humane Society International (HSI) also helped out in the vaccination though they only focused their efforts in Payatas (they were testing their software on dog population survey and census and chose Payatas as their pilot area).

The program ran for a month, from August 25 to September 28 and was piloted in District 2 which covered 7 villages including Payatas.

GARC documented the mass dog vaccination in Payatas as part of the World Rabies Day 2016 celebration.