Recent advances in prevention and control of rabies.

Rabies is one of the oldest zoonotic disease which continues to pose a significant threat to humans in most parts of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa. As huge animal reservoirs exist in most parts of the world, the threat to humans is likely to continue for many more years. In the past decade, a renewed effort has been made to reduce the burden of rabies focusing particularly on the Asian and African countries. Several national and international organizations including World Health Organization (WHO) and Global Alliance for rabies Control (GARC) are now actively working out various strategies for getting international and national commitment to eliminate human rabies and reduce canine rabies. New developments have taken place in rabies prevention in humans and canine rabies control. Keeping this view, a special issue of Journal of Preventive Medicine was designed to update the readers on important aspects of rabies prevention, epidemiology and control.