An optimised rabies vaccination schedule for rural settlements

The timely and efficient administration of rabies vaccinations to animals in rural villages is necessary to attain a state of herd immunity. Efficient sampling of households in a rural village is of utmost importance in reaching the most animals for vaccination, with the least effort, and in the lowest time. This research seeks to both optimise the spatial sampling scheme used to sample households, as well as the route travelled by persons performing door-to-door vaccinations. The walking time in minutes is regarded as the cost of a vaccination scheme and is minimised in this paper. The distribution of houses in a rural village constitutes a spatial point pattern in R², and as such, spatial point pattern analysis techniques as well as some spatial sampling schemes are applied throughout this research. The penultimate aim of this work is to provide policy makers with additional tools to combat rabies, a disease which remains endemic to some countries in West and Central Africa, and Asia.