Rabies is a deadly disease. Without vaccination, a rabies infection is nearly 100% fatal once someone develops symptoms. Texas has experienced two rabies epidemics in animals since 1988: one involving coyotes and dogs in south Texas and the other involving gray foxes in west-central Texas. Affecting 74 counties, these outbreaks led to thousands of people who could have been exposed, two human deaths, and countless animal lives lost.
In 1994, Gov. Ann Richards declared rabies a state health emergency. The Texas Department of State Health Services responded by launching the Oral Rabies Vaccination Program to control the spread of these wildlife rabies outbreaks.
Since 1995, the program has distributed over 53 million doses of rabies vaccine over 758,100 square miles(nearly 2 million square kilometers) in Texas by hand or aircraft. Rabies cases in dogs and coyotes went from 141 to 0 by 2005, and rabies cases in foxes went from ...
