Presentation short abstract

This paper critiques the colonial surveillance system to study neglected tropical diseases, such as rabies in India and examine the drawback of scientific methods in estimating the real burden on vulnerable communities through triangulation of joint-point regression, temporal trends and policy gaps.

Presentation long abstract

The Identification of rabies as a neglected tropical disease came through colonial medicine. Similarly, the surveillance system for detecting rabies and the discourse rely on positivist ontologies that count institutionally reported deaths, laboratory-confirmed cases and narratives constructed around developed regions. The ecological models and algorithms in place neglect free-roaming dogs and their fit into multi-species spaces, leading to 9.1 million animal bites every year, surfacing towards an epidemiological risk.

This paper addresses such epistemic gaps through the one-health approach and the triangulation of joint-point regression on GBD Data from 1990 to 2021, engaging local knowledge systems and multi-species landscapes. It highlights the implementation gaps of positivist methodologies in terms of policies that do not address the gendered prevalence of disease and age-wise risk groups, which was exhibited from the results. Furthermore, gender hegemony and age disparity were also observed in all four indicators and economic metrics. Thus, this paper proposes an Intervention between the epistemologies of public health and ecology, reshaping the identity of dogs more than free-roaming or rabies vectors.

It captures the systematic underestimation of deaths due to rabies, which varies region-wise. The work draws upon political ecology and proposes multi-sectoral collaboration between different actors(including dogs) for reforming people's knowledge and behaviour towards the disease and species,and reducing under-reporting of cases through awareness and vaccination. It suggests community participation, social media campaigns and including poor communities who have the least access to post-exposure prophylaxis. Thus, it proposes the narrative of decolonising the rabies ecology in India.