Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease (Mar 2023)

One Health Approach on Dog Bites: Demographic and Associated Socioeconomic Factors in Southern Brazil

  • Caroline Constantino,
  • Evelyn Cristine Da Silva,
  • Danieli Muchalak Dos Santos,
  • Igor Adolfo Dexheimer Paploski,
  • Marcia Oliveira Lopes,
  • Vivien Midori Morikawa,
  • Alexander Welker Biondo

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed8040189
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 4
p. 189

Abstract

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Despite being an important public health issue, particularly due to rabies, dog bites and associated risk factors have rarely been assessed by health services from a One Health perspective. Accordingly, the present study aimed to assess dog biting and associated demographic and socioeconomic risk factors in Curitiba, the eighth-largest Brazilian city with approximately 1.87 million people, based on the post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) rabies reports between January/2010 and December/2015. The total of 45,392 PEP reports corresponded to an average annual incidence of 4.17/1000 habitants, mainly affecting white (79.9%, 4.38/1000 population), males (53.1%, 4.81/1000 population), and children aged 0–9 years (20.1%, 6.9/1000 population), with severe accidents associated with older victims (p p < 0.001) reduction in dog bites. In summary, dog biting occurrence was associated with victims’ low income, gender, race/color, and age; severe accidents were associated with elderly victims. As dog bites have been described as multifactorial events involving human, animal, and environmental factors, the characteristics presented herein should be used as a basis to define mitigation, control, and prevention strategies from a One Health perspective.

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