Worldwide, rabies causes tens of thousands of deaths annually – with 40 per cent being children under 15. The virus is still rampant in over 150 countries and territories today, mainly in Asia and Africa.
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But in most of mainland Europe, the virus has been a thing of the past for decades. Having been successfully eliminated in Western and Central Europe through vaccination campaigns in the 1990s, the presence of the virus has long been limited to sporadic cases, mostly on the eastern border of the EU.
In recent years, cases have been on the increase – here’s all you need to know about why, and what can be done to prevent it spreading further.
What is rabies?
Rabies is a viral, zoonotic (can naturally spread from animals to humans), neglected tropical disease (NTD). It is caused by Lyssaviruses of the family Rhabdoviridae and can affect all mammals, including humans. Transmission occurs through exposure to infectious saliva – 99 per cent of human rabies cases are caused by dog bites and scratches.
Once the virus infects the central nervous system and clinical symptoms appear, rabies is fatal in 100 per cent of cases (according to the World Health Organization). But death is preventable if a post-exposure vaccine is promptly administered.
If you’re bitten or scratched by a potentially rabid animal, you should immediately clean the wound with soap and water for 20 minutes and seek professional medical care.
It’s important to remember that even if you received a pre-exposure vaccine, it doesn’t eliminate the need for post-exposure treatment – it only simplifies it and buys critical time.
Why is rabies returning in Europe?
A big driver in the recent resurgence of rabies is political instability in parts of Eastern Europe. Most of the rabies cases detected in the EU have been located, on average, within 50 kilometres of the borders with Ukraine and Moldova.
“Parts of eastern Europe are not vaccinating due to geopolitical reasons,” Gowri Yale, Global Rabies Program Director at Ceva Sante Animale, an animal health company based in France, told BBC Wildlife. “It’s natural to lose focus on vaccinating your wildlife when there’s war. Ukraine is still vaccinating wildlife – but usually, you’d do that by dropping the baits from the sky, and since Ukraine can’t fly their planes, they have to vaccinate by sending people into forests and distributing baits by hand.”
The conflict might also be influencing wildlife migration – the destruction of habitats and food sources forces animals to move into new areas, and on the off-chance that they’ve been infected, they spread the virus further.
What are the hotspots for rabies infections in Europe?
The first significant rabies resurgence in the EU occurred in Poland in 2021, when rabies was reported in the Mazowieckie voivodeship, a region free of wildlife rabies for 17 years prior. By the end of the year, a total of 113 cases were reported in the country, most of them among wildlife.
According to research published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases in February this year, the previous years saw considerably lower numbers across the entire eastern border of the EU – eight cases in 2017-2018, and five cases in 2019.
The situation in Poland is currently pretty much under control, with 48 cases in 2024, but only 12 in 2025 – and most of them in the border area with Belarus and Ukraine.
The second major rabies outbreak in Europe was in 2022, and it affected Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. The latter two had not detected any cases for several years prior. Since then, Romania alone reported 109 cases in 2025, but the situation is under control in Hungary (18 cases in 2024 and two cases in 2025) and Slovakia (one case in 2024 and none in 2025).
In July 2025, a 44-year-old man in Romania died of rabies after being bitten by a stray dog in February. He was treated with antibiotics but didn’t receive a post-exposure vaccine. This was the first confirmed human death from rabies transmitted by a land animal in the EU since 2012.
On top of this, studies have detected the C variant of the virus, previously confined to eastern Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia, in Poland and Romania. This represents an unusual geographic expansion towards the west – only amplifying how vulnerable the rabies-free status in Central Europe is if it's not kept in check by continuous vaccination efforts.
How fast does rabies spread within populations?
According to Gowri Yale, it depends on the number of animals that are there to spread the virus.
“Suppose you’re in a part of India where there is no rabies, but there are a lot of dogs. If you bring in the virus, it will take a few months,” she said. “To step back a bit, if a dog is bitten in its leg or back, it takes a few weeks for it to become contagious and die. So, you have a few weeks between each animal passing it on.”
“The disease can move from 30 to 100km per year, depending on the density of the dog population.”
According to the State of Pet Homelessness Project, there are about 75,000 stray dogs living on the streets in Poland. In Romania, the numbers are much more staggering, with an estimated 600,000 stray dogs, making it the largest stray-dog population in Europe.
What can we do?
“A lot of effort over the last decades would go to waste if we let rabies come back,” said Yale. “It would cost millions of euros to eliminate rabies again.”
According to research published in the journal Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, the EU allocated €131.4 million between 2014 and 2019 to large-scale rabies eradication programs. Germany spent approx. €100 million over several decades – with €37 million covered by the EU.
“To stop that from happening, it would be wise to vaccinate [along] the borders proactively. Hence the EU is already supporting these efforts financially,” added Yale.
On a smaller scale, an average person can make sure they report any stray dogs they come across to the local authorities, especially if they suspect the animal to be rabid.
For further information about rabies, and to find out more about some of the efforts being made to stop the disease, not just in Europe but worldwide, click here.
Top image credit: Iuliia Zavalishina/Getty Images
