Animal bite and rabies surveillance in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, 2017

Background: Animal bites result in significant medical costs due to injury and infection. One per cent of emergency department visits in the United States are related to animal bites. Relatedly, 60-70 dogs, over 250 cats, and thousands of wild animals test positive for rabies in the U.S. each year. However, Pennsylvania has not had a human rabies case since 1984. Animal bite and rabies surveillance by local health departments, such as the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD), is critical to rabies prevention efforts as staff recommend rabies post-exposure prophylaxis vaccination when necessary. Methods: All animal bite report data and rabies test results from 2017 were obtained from the ACHD’s Oracle database. Data were imported into Microsoft Excel and deduplicated, and values were reclassified if the information was inconsistently reported. Analysis was completed using SAS, and figures were created in Excel. Results: There were 1,883 mammal bites reported to ACHD in 2017, with dogs (71%) and cats (24%) involved in the majority of bites. Victims ranged from