Republic Act 9842

By Jillian Velasco

We know that the Animal Welfare Act exists to protect animals from cruelty and abuse. But did you also know that there is a 19-year old law that seeks to eliminate human and animal rabies in the Philippines?

There is, and that is Republic Act 9482, or the Anti-Rabies Act, with the foremost goal of achieving a rabies-free Philippines.

Enacted in 2007, the law mandated the creation of the National Rabies Prevention and Control Program (NRPCP), chaired by the Bureau of Animal Industry under the Department of Agriculture (DA). To control and eradicate the viral disease, the program has the following activities: mass vaccination of dogs, establishment of a central database system for registered and vaccinated pets, impounding of unregistered, stray and unvaccinated dogs, and conduct of education campaign on prevention and control of rabies and practice of responsible pet ownership.

It is a multi-agency effort since the program is implemented through the joint efforts of the DA, Department of Health (DOH), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Department of Education (DepEd), as well as local government units with the assistance of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Non-Governmental Organizations.

Here’s the catch: the agency envisioned a rabies-free Philippines by 2020. However, by 2022, only 8 out of 81 provinces had been declared rabies-free. These eight provinces are Batanes, Marinduque, Romblon, Catanduanes, Biliran, Dinagat Islands, Camiguin and Siquijor.

MIMAROPA is the only region with two rabies-free zones — Marinduque in 2014 and Romblon in 2019. To achieve its status, Romblon took nearly a decade of coordination among its 17 municipalities to distribute free anti-rabies vaccines across its 219 barangays, alongside a year-round information campaign in schools, communities and barangays to increase awareness on rabies and responsible pet ownership.

So, what happened to other provinces?

For my data journalism class during my undergraduate studies, I had the opportunity to interview veterinarians who worked with the NRPCP. Veterinarians Joy Lagayan and Daphne Rhea, who worked together as the agency’s focal persons since 2015, witnessed how insufficient budget slowed down the objectives for a 2020 rabies-free Philippines.

For illustration, in 2019, the NRPCP received a Php 900 million budget from the DOH. However, these were allotted only for human vaccines. Meanwhile, the DA used to allot Php 10 million yearly for the program from 2005 to 2008 and Php 40 million in 2009, but then decreased the budget to Php 8 million in 2018.

Another hurdle that the agency had to deal with was the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to community lockdowns, the NRPCP has been working with the DepEd on integrating rabies education in the K-12 program. Unfortunately, the collaboration had been paused as all modules created were specifically designed for the face-to-face set up.

As some consolation, it was not only the Philippines which struggled to achieve its zero-rabies target. Several countries in the ASEAN region faced similar woes in implementing the program on ground, such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia.

As a result, the ASEAN Rabies Elimination Strategy, through the ASEAN Tripartite Rabies Meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2018, decided to move the target year from 2020 to 2030. This gives the Philippines another ten years to achieve the goal, and four years as of writing.

Dog vaccination is essential in eradication of rabies in the country, but the lack of funds for the procurement of the necessary vaccines and other capacity-building efforts prove to be the biggest deterrent to a rabies-free Philippines.

I have seven dogs in total – six are living with me in Quezon City; Pepper, Butter, Sugar, Kopiko, Peanut and Chocnut, and one already crossed the rainbow bridge early this January. Naturally, I have become an advocate for animal welfare. In fact, my aggressive but good-looking Zyrky, whom I was blessed to have for seven years before it went to paradise, managed to bite me at least twice a year since 2019.