Recent data on the epidemiology and prophylaxis of human rabies in France

Rabies is an animal disease which is transmitted to man only by accident, most often through the bite (more rarely after scratches or licks of mucosa) of a rabid animal, domestic or wild. A good knowledge of the epizootiology of animal rabies is therefore necessary to establish, on solid grounds, the prophylaxis of human rabies. Inter-human transmission of rabies being an exceptional event which will be considered separately, the epidemiology of human rabies mainly studies the sources and circumstances of human exposure to rabid animals, which differ according to the epizootiology of animal rabies in a given country: either enzootic (or hyperenzootic) canine rabies, or enzootic selvatic rabies. It appears that the risk of human rabies is higher in the first situation for two reasons: (i) rabies viruses show an increased virulence due to numerous serial passages in dogs (viruses with short incubation period) and (ii) high frequency of dog-man contacts due to the high density of both populations.