About Afya Serengeti

Afya Serengeti (meaning health of Serengeti is a rabies vaccination project in dogs run by The Alliance for Rabies Control to reduce the impact of rabies around the famous Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

Rabies is a fatal neurological disease, which is widespread throughout Africa with more than 25,000 people dying from the disease each year and more than 55.000 victims globally, most of them children, bitten by domestic dogs, the main carrier of the disease.

Afya Serengeti started as a research project in 1997 led by Dr. Sarah Cleaveland from the Centre of Tropical Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and developed into a major rabies control program that works with local people in the Serengeti in Tanzania to ensure widespread vaccination of domestic dogs. A vaccination zone has been set up around the Serengeti National Park with regular clinics for dog owners to bring their pets to be registered and vaccinated.

Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health has a long history in campaigning against rabies by supporting the Afya Serengeti project since 2003 as well as by helping to fund-raise for World Rabies Day (September 28).
As a result of this campaign, the number of people requiring hospital care for bites from rabid dogs has dropped by 82%.

Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health is the single vaccine donor of the Afya Serengeti program, providing over 200.000 doses of rabies vaccines each year. The vaccination program has resulted in substantial drops in reported animal rabies cases and households reporting bite injuries from rabid dogs since its start in 2003. In 2007 Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health’s Seasons Greetings Donation provided the team in Tanzania with the funds to replace their jeep, which is elementary for each year’s vaccination campaign and the investigation of rabies suspect cases.