Spatio-temporal description of bovine rabies cases in Peru, 2003-2017.

Vampire bats became the main reservoir of rabies in Latin America, where the disease remains one of the most important viral zoonoses affecting humans and livestock. In Peru, the most affected livestock are cattle. The official data of 1,729 cases of bovine rabies were evaluated between 2003 and 2017 through a descriptive analysis, decomposition of the time-series and spatio-temporal analyses. Although the cases did not present a defined seasonality, the trend seemed to increase for several years. The bovine rabies cases are more frequent in the inter-Andean valleys than in other regions of the Amazon plains. The highest case density was observed in the regions of Ayacucho, Cuzco and Apurímac, all located in the Andes. It is necessary to review the current national program for the prevention and control of rabies in livestock, incorporating concepts of the ecology of vampire bats, as well as the prediction of the infection waves geographic and temporal spread. These approaches could improve the efficiency of other current prevention measures that have not shown the expected control effects, such as indiscriminate culling of vampire bats.