Historical Review of Rabies in Chile: A Canine Rabies Virus-Free Country

No evidence exists of rabies in Chile during the pre-colonial period. Apparently, canine rabies was introduced to Chile sometime after European colonization during the fifteenth century. Notably, during his travels throughout South America, Charles Darwin described the existence of hydrophobia in the valleys of Chile in 1835. After Pasteur’s innovation of vaccination at the end of the nineteenth century, local production of adult rabbit nerve tissue vaccine began during 1896. The first diagnostic report of animal and human rabies in Chile occurred in 1929. The 1955 development of the safer suckling mouse brain vaccine for human prophylaxis (Fuenzalida-Palacios) was a key local event, with eventual technology transfer throughout the Latin American region. The initial evolution of canine rabies from the nineteenth century, with numerous human and animal cases, changed to sporadic cases in domestic animals during the twentieth century, due to mass vaccination. Today, Chile is characterized with very rare human cases, only linked to wildlife, with the achievement of canine rabies elimination far in advance of the global 2030 goal, and active surveillance of wildlife reservoirs in contact with domestic animals and humans.