




But for animals that spend their days roaming and foraging, protecting livestock and helping as hunters, they seem surprisingly patient; the scene, on this October morning, surprisingly routine.


It's a program directed and mostly paid for by a small not-for-profit organization half a world away, Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. "Part of our mission at Lincoln Park Zoo is conserving wildlife where the wildlife is," says Lisa Faust, the zoo's conservation and science vice president, who watches the proceedings keenly.

She is spending two weeks touring the Tanzanian operation to try to figure out how best to run it going forward. The calculations include finding the money to keep paying for it and the ultimate but challenging goal of passing its control into Tanzanian hands.


"The program is working," says Julius Keyyu, research and coordination director of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, a government agency headquartered in the city of Arusha. "They are doing a good job, especially the vaccination effort in the Serengeti area. Even human bites are down."

The Serengeti Health Initiative is one of several projects that have proved domestic dog vaccination can effectively control or eliminate rabies in the developing world, just as it has in wealthier nations. The work has helped push a worldwide effort to fight rabies that has gained special vigor in the past five years, since the founding of the Global Alliance for Rabies Control.


The Serengeti program, says Keyyu, "is being used as a model in different parts of the world to control rabies."



In the days leading up to a vaccination effort, program workers visit local primary schools to talk about rabies, taking the message to the dogs' primary caretakers.


Posters are put up explaining, in words and images, the danger of rabies and what to do in case of an animal bite. Written on them is the time and place where the shots will be given and a key message: The treatment is free. In a country where a 2001 government survey showed households spent 53,000 Tanzanian shillings, or less than $40, per year, few people in these towns have money to spare for dogs.

The cycle is repeated from March to December in a six-mile-wide zone, a cordon-sanitaire (sanitary cordon), around the park. Last year, the zoo's staff of five Tanzanians delivered 40,000 vaccine doses in 154 vaccination days and passed on approximately another 80,000 doses to local veterinary officials in areas just beyond the zone.

Lines are shorter than usual on this day in Bunda. Rain kept the workers from putting up posters, and the town's size of about 40,000 inhabitants renders the loudspeaker method less effective than in villages. Still, by midmorning about 200 dogs (and a handful of cats) have been inoculated.




"One stick, it is done," says Mzimbri, 51, who has been with the project for four years. "We also have spray for the (dog's) wounds and a balm for mange."

"It's easy," says farmer John Magesa, 30, who has brought the dog he uses for home and livestock security. And the logic is clear: "If my dog got rabies, it would endanger my family, and all the community."

Another of the few adults who have brought a dog is John Nyamkuro, 58, a farmer. "By vaccinating the dogs," he says, "I can prevent (rabies) from going to humans, especially the kids."


"People, they like it," says Kaneja Mangaru, 30, a worker wearing a Lincoln Park Zoo T-shirt that here seems almost ironic _ along with the logo, it says "Lion Country." "In some areas last year, we couldn't go at the usual time because a bridge was out. They kept on calling us, 'Come to the village!' "