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Rabies epidemic is on the rise in Russia
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
14 Russians died from this terrible disease last year because they did not take the danger seriously
The Office of Rospotrebnadzor for the Moscow Region has released some disappointing data: since the beginning of 2011, the geography of the spread of such a dangerous disease as rabies has increased by one and a half times, compared to the figures for the same period last year.
Over the last two months, rabies was registered in 15 municipalities - a total of 29 cases (last year's figures were 19 in 10 municipalities). The most unfavorable were the Klinsky, Istrinsky, Yegoryevsky and Naro-Fominsky districts - the largest number of cases of the disease were recorded there. We are mainly talking about wild animals - 18 cases, domestic pets fell ill three times less often.
Most often, infected animals attacked people in the Istrinskaya and Ozersky districts. Another distinctive feature of recent times is that people are increasingly bitten by forest dwellers who have contracted rabies.
The unfavorable situation is not only in the Moscow region. Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Rostov, Lipetsk, Ulyanovsk, Tver, Kostroma, Ivanovo, Kursk, Smolensk, Omsk, Sverdlovsk regions - this is only part of the country's territories where natural foci of rabies have recently become active. In general, the infection was registered in 63 subjects of the Russian Federation.
The situation in a number of places is now so serious that authorities are forced to introduce emergency measures there.
In the Yaroslavl region, for example, 33 settlements had to be closed for quarantine. Pereslavsky, Rostovsky, Nekrasovsky and Gavrilov-Yamsky districts are under special control of specialists. All domestic animals in local villages and hamlets are subject to mandatory vaccination, even those that ended up in these places, as they say, "passing through". In this case, even if the animal is bitten by a rabid beast, the disease is not transmitted.
Several districts of the Ulyanovsk Region, where 34 people have suffered from animals with this diagnosis since the beginning of the year, and Lipetsk Region are under quarantine for rabies. Restrictive measures have been introduced in the Smolensk Region (the body of an infected cat was recently found on one of the streets of the regional center), Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov and Omsk Regions.
Rabies is also gaining momentum in the Urals. In the Sverdlovsk region, since the beginning of the year, the incidence of rabies among animals has increased by one and a half times compared to the same period in 2010. During this time, the deadly virus has managed to visit the territories of 74 settlements. More than two thousand residents of the region have suffered from animal teeth.
Wild animals literally attacked Chelyabinsk, Miass, Troitsk, Yemanzhelinsky, Chebarkulsky and Chesmensky districts. In Troitsk, the situation resembles scenes from horror films: packs of stray dogs have become a real threat to the city's residents. In March, a pack of vicious dogs mauled a young woman to death, and, as it turned out, this was not their first victim - the remains of another person were found not far from the scene of the attack.
And recently a stray dog bit a little girl. The animal attacked the child near the railway station, biting into the little girl's cheek. The girl's mother barely managed to rescue her daughter from the enraged dog.
In total, during the first quarter of 2011, 106 residents of this Ural city sought medical help after suffering from animal bites.
According to the World Health Organization, 55,000 people die from rabies every year, that is, one person every 10 minutes. Another 10 million people on Earth receive specific treatment, the cost of which in the most disadvantaged countries of Asia and Africa is about 560 million dollars. In terms of economic damage, this disease ranks fifth, and is the tenth most significant cause of death among other infectious diseases.
And although Russia, according to WHO experts, is not one of the countries where the situation can be called critical, specialists say that in the long-term dynamics of rabies incidence there is a clear tendency to increase at an average rate of 10% annually.