Mismatch in data on rabies deaths poses major challenge

In 2025, India recorded 55 deaths by malaria, 131 deaths by dengue, and 27 deaths by kala-azar (visceral leishmaniasis or black fever), according to Union Health Ministry data, whereas there is no single comparable and comprehensive national measure of its annual human rabies mortality, even as the country looks to eliminate dog-mediated human rabies by the year 2030.

While a community-based study led by researchers from the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Epidemiology (ICMR-NIE) and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases recently estimated that 5,726 people die of rabies in India every year, the Health Ministry’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme-Integrated Health Information Platform (IDSP-IHIP) system reported 21 deaths by rabies in 2022, 50 in 2023, and 54 in 2024.

In contrast, the Registrar General of India’s Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD) system recorded 66 medically certified rabies deaths in 2022, and 271 in 2023. The MCCD system, however, covers only medically certified deaths and does not capture all registered deaths.

These figures are not directly comparable — the IDSP-IHIP is a disease surveillance system, while the MCCD captures medically certified causes through civil registration. At the national level, the MCCD covered 22.3% of registered deaths in 2022, and 22.0% in 2023. Neither system, therefore, provides a complete national count — underscoring the gaps in India’s rabies mortality surveillance.

The government table, sourced to IDSP-IHIP, had recorded one death in January 2025 but did not provide a figure for all of 2025. The government’s published table, labelled ‘Human Rabies cases (Death)’, gives the source as IDSP-IHIP.