Which one of the following Indian States has recently declared itself as the first rabies-free State?
- (a)Punjab
- (b)Himachal Pradesh
- (c)Tamil Nadu
- (d)Goa
Correct — D, Goa. In June 2021 Goa became the first Indian state to be declared a rabies-controlled area, and on 23 June 2021 the Chief Minister, Pramod Sawant, announced that Goa had become India's first rabies-free state. The achievement rests on a decade of work by the state government with the Mission Rabies programme, built on the mass vaccination of dogs — of the order of ninety thousand a year across the state — together with community education, a surveillance and bite-response network and a hotline for reporting suspected cases. The result that matters is that Goa has recorded no human death from rabies since 2018, an elimination later documented in the peer-reviewed literature as a One Health success, meaning it was achieved by treating animal health, human health and the environment as one problem rather than three.
- (a)Punjab — Punjab has run its own animal birth control and anti-rabies vaccination work, but it was not the state that made this declaration in 2021.
- (b)Himachal Pradesh — A small hill state, which makes it a plausible-sounding candidate for a first-in-India health claim, but the announcement came from Goa.
- (c)Tamil Nadu — Tamil Nadu has a strong public health record and a large anti-rabies programme, and it is the strongest of the three wrong answers for that reason. The 2021 declaration was still Goa's.
Rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms appear, and in India the overwhelming majority of human cases come from dog bites. That makes it a disease controlled at the animal end rather than the human one: vaccinate enough of the dog population — the figure usually cited is around seventy per cent of dogs in an area — and the virus cannot sustain transmission, so human cases fall away even before every dog is covered. Post-exposure prophylaxis protects the individual who has been bitten; mass dog vaccination protects everybody.
The wording is worth being precise about, because the exam repeats a phrase from a press announcement rather than a technical status. What Goa formally became in June 2021 was a rabies-controlled area, the first geographic zone in India to be given controlled status for any zoonotic disease; 'rabies-free' is how the achievement was announced and reported. Both statements point at the same fact, which is the absence of human rabies deaths since 2018, and the exam's option is Goa either way. The wider frame is the global goal of zero human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030, towards which Goa is the Indian test case that other states are being asked to copy.
- Goa was declared the first rabies-controlled area in India in June 2021, and the Chief Minister announced on 23 June 2021 that it had become the country's first rabies-free state.
- Around ninety thousand dogs a year are vaccinated in the state under the Mission Rabies programme run with the state government.
- Goa has recorded no human rabies deaths since 2018.
- The approach is described as One Health — animal vaccination, human treatment, education and surveillance treated as a single system.
- The global target is zero human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030.
The disease is beaten at the animal end — which is what One Health means in practice.
- Assuming a large or a wealthy state must be first; Goa's small size and concentrated dog population were part of why it worked there.
- Reading 'rabies-free' as the eradication of the virus; it describes the absence of human deaths and controlled status, not the disappearance of the pathogen.
- Treating vaccination of people as the main lever. Vaccinating dogs is what stops transmission.
As a first-in-India item naming a state, or inside a statements question on rabies control and the One Health approach.
Which of the following statements is/are correct about vaccination that provides protection against an infectious disease? 1. It blocks the entry of the infectious agent into body. 2. It produces antibodies against infection. 3. It kills the infectious agent when it enters in the body. Select the correct answer using the code given below.
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) 2 and 3 only
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(c) 2 and 3 only
The mechanism underneath this answer. Goa's result came from vaccinating dogs, and that CDS item asks what a vaccine actually does — it does not block entry of the agent, it prepares the immune system to produce antibodies. Understanding that is what explains why immunising the animal reservoir, rather than treating people after a bite, is what ends transmission.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In India, the overwhelming majority of human rabies cases are transmitted by
- (a)rodents
- (b)dogs
- (c)cattle
- (d)monkeys
Answer(b) dogs — which is why control programmes concentrate on mass dog vaccination rather than on treating people after exposure alone.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The One Health approach to a disease such as rabies is best described as
- (a)treating only the human patients who report to hospitals
- (b)handling animal health, human health and the environment as a single connected system
- (c)providing a single national health insurance scheme
- (d)restricting all treatment to government hospitals
Answer(b) handling animal health, human health and the environment as a single connected system — Goa's result came from vaccinating dogs, educating communities and running surveillance together.