Sri Lanka vaccinated a record 1,690,887 dogs against rabies last year as the country expands vaccination, sterilisation and awareness work aimed at eliminating human deaths from the disease.
The 2025 figure is a sharp rise on the 1,280,775 dogs vaccinated in 2024 and 1,317,422 in 2023, according to the National Anti-Rabies Campaign of the Public Health Veterinary Services, the Daily Mirror reported.
Human rabies deaths have fallen over the same period — from 28 in 2022 to 16 in 2023, 20 in 2024 and 14 in 2025.
Why dogs are the focus
Dr Niroshan Gamage, Director of the National Anti-Rabies Campaign, said dogs remain by far the main source of human rabies exposure in Sri Lanka. Laboratory surveillance by the Medical Research Institute across several study periods found that roughly 85% to 97% of confirmed rabies-positive samples come from dogs, with cats accounting for about 2%.
That makes mass vaccination of the dog population the centre of the national effort. The programme covers owned, community and free-roaming dogs, and uses oral rabies vaccine for animals that are difficult to catch or handle. Sri Lanka is still classified as canine-rabies endemic, so coverage has to be sustained year on year.
No-kill policy and post-exposure care
Since 2007 Sri Lanka has followed a “No Kill” policy, replacing culling with animal birth control — sterilisation and, where appropriate, hormonal contraception — to manage the free-roaming dog population.
The second line of defence is treating people after exposure. Rabies is transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal, usually via a bite, though scratches or licks on broken skin or mucous membranes can also transmit the virus. Once symptoms appear the disease is essentially untreatable, which makes prompt treatment critical. Post-exposure treatment is provided free of charge at government hospitals.
The Public Health Veterinary Services coordinates the programme with regional and district veterinary teams, alongside the Medical Research Institute and the Department of Animal Production and Health, with technical support from the WHO, the FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health.
