ABSTRACT
Background: Rabies is one of the deadliest diseases of mankind, and has terrified since antiquity. It is 100 per cent fatal, however, 100% preventable. In India, rabies causes an estimated 20,565 deaths with 17.4 million exposures to animal bites, mainly dog bites, occurring every year. In India a person is bitten by an animal in every 2 seconds and someone dies from rabies every 30 second. Complete post-exposure prophylaxis is necessary among the animal bite cases for complete protection. Hence this study aims to determine the patient’s compliance for intradermal anti-rabies vaccination and also to determine the constraints for compliance.Methods: A retrospective record based study was conducted in the ARC of S.M.S.M.C, Jaipur where patients were provided intradermal rabies vaccination (updated Thai Red Cross regimen) for post-exposure prophylaxis. The records maintained at ARC-SMSMC under department of community medicine from March 2016- February 2017 were analysed. The total number of patients was 8873 from which 8590 subjects were recruited for the study after excluding category I cases, pre-exposure cases rat bite, human bite, re-exposure and pre-exposure cases. The major constraints were found out by interviewing the patient/guardian through the telephone.Results: The compliance rate for intradermal rabies vaccination (IDRV) is 81.87%. The major constraints were timings not convenient, personal or social workload, long distance from the hospital, forgotten the dates.Conclusions: The compliance rate for rabies vaccination is considerably low for this highly fatal disease. Considering these major constraint factors, the animal bite victims should be motivated effectively through health education at the time of initiation of vaccination course to attain the goal of rabies free India.