POLICY BRIEF article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Animal Rabies Prevention and Control in Shanghai, China: Policies and Practices, 2011-2025
Provisionally accepted
Tingyi Zhu*
Xiaojing Chang
Xiujuan WuLuming XiaXiaoying ZhuJiuchao ZhuZengqiang LiWeifeng ChenYufeng FanYanting TangHongjin Zhao*- Shanghai Animal Disease Prevention and Control Center, Shanghai, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background:Rabies remains a public health issue in Shanghai, with human cases reported since 2006, necessitating sustained multi-faceted control. Strategies:Key measures include mandatory canine vaccination, increased access to vaccination services (19 to 431 by 2025), management of free-roaming animals, and public education campaigns. Challenges & Perspective:Challenges persist—particularly the low vaccination coverage among free-roaming animals. Future priorities involve developing oral rabies vaccines for free-roaming animals, enhancing wildlife rabies surveillance, expanding insurance coverage for postexposure prophylaxis, and strengthening cross-sector collaboration through the One Health framework. Conclusions:Shanghai's integrated strategies have reduced human rabies. Achieving the 2030 zero-death goal requires closing gaps in free-roaming animal vaccination and postexposure prophylaxis access.
Keywords: Compulsory vaccination, Dog management, One Health, Postexposure prophylaxis, Rabies
Received: 24 Oct 2025; Accepted: 11 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Chang, Wu, Xia, Zhu, Zhu, Li, Chen, Fan, Tang and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tingyi Zhu
Hongjin Zhao
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.