Lessons learned and paths forward for rabies dog vaccination in Madagascar: a case study of pilot vaccination campaigns in Moramanga District

Canine rabies causes an estimated 60,000 human deaths per year, but these deaths are preventable through post-exposure prophylaxis of people and vaccination of domestic dogs. Dog vaccination campaigns targeting 70% of the population are effective at interrupting transmission. Here, we report on lessons learned during pilot dog vaccination campaigns in the Moramanga District of Madagascar. We compare two different vaccination strategies: a volunteer-driven effort to vaccinate dogs in two communes using static point vaccination and continuous vaccination as part of routine veterinary services. We used dog age data from the campaigns to estimate key demographic parameters and to simulate different vaccination strategies. Overall, we found that dog vaccination was feasible and that most dogs were accessible to vaccination. The static-point campaign achieved higher coverage but required more resources and had a limited geographic scope compared to the continuous delivery campaign. Our modeling results suggest that targeting puppies through community-based vaccination efforts could improve coverage. We found that mass dog vaccination is feasible and can achieve high coverage in Madagascar; however, context-specific strategies and an investment in dog vaccination as a public good will be required to move the country towards elimination

Governance analysis of a community managed small-scale crab fishery in Madagascar:novel use of an empirical framework

The Marine Protected Area Governance (MPAG) framework was developed to offer a structured, empirical approach for analysing governance and has been applied to marine protected areas (MPAs) around the world. This study sees the novel application of the MPAG framework to a small-scale mangrove crab fishery in northwest Madagascar. The country typifies developing country environmental governance challenges, due to its poverty, political instability and lack of state capacity, with bottom-up approaches often identified as a potential solution. In this context, small-scale fisheries (SSF) play a vital role in food security and poverty alleviation but are vulnerable to over-exploitation. The case study examines community-based management, including the role of three nascent fishing association managing portions of the fishery, within a mangrove ecosystem. Despite issues with underrepresentation of fishers in local resource management organizations that have partial responsibility for the mangrove habitats, some management measures and incentives have been applied, including the replantation of mangroves and fishery-wide gear restrictions. However, the analysis highlights market forces and migration are drivers with negative synergistic effects that cannot be controlled by bottom-up management. Incentives identified as needed or in need or strengthening require the support of external actors, the state, industry and or NGO(s). Thus, governance approaches should seek integration and move away from polarised solutions (top-down vs- bottom-up). As shown by other MPAG case studies, effective governance is dependent on achieving ‘resilience through diversity’, in terms of the diversity of both the actors and the incentives they are able to collectively employ