Thousands of people die every year from this horrific and preventable disease, because the control of canine rabies has been severely neglected in developing countries [2] . Inherent inter-annual periodicity of epidemics exacerbates the situation, with rabies only intermittently perceived as problematic [6] , as illustrated by the recent outbreak in China [34] . The problem of canine rabies has often been considered intractable in rural Africa, because of poor infrastructure, limited capacity, and the misperception that large popula-tions of wild carnivores are responsible for disease persistence. Our analyses show that global control of canine rabies is entirely feasible and that successful elimination of canine rabies in many parts of the world has likely been achieved precisely because R 0 is so low and institutional commitment to maintain high levels of vaccination coverage has been sustained [6] . Achieving vaccination coverage of 60% or more in dog populations in Africa is both logistically and economically feasible through annual vaccination campaigns [9] [10] [11] 29] . The resultant reduction in costs of human postexposure prophylaxis suggest that vaccination interventions targeted at domestic dog populations could translate into appreciable savings for the public health sector [3, 8, 29] . Furthermore, the inherently low R 0 and the tractability of rabies contact-tracing indicates that once endemic rabies is controlled, elimination could be achieved through active case detection in remnant foci of infection (much like the strategy used to eradicate smallpox [35] ); similar measures are proving effective in programmes to eliminate canine rabies in the Americas [36] . However, the most crucial step towards global elimination of canine rabies will be sustained commitment and coordinated efforts to maintain sufficient vaccination coverage in domestic dog populations.