Chile Becomes First South American Country to Eliminate Dog-Transmitted Rabies, WHO Confirms

Chile has become the first country in South America to eliminate dog-transmitted rabies, after health authorities went more than five decades without recording a single human case caught from a dog.

The World Health Organization announced the validation on 14 September 2026, in a joint statement issued from Santiago, Washington DC and Geneva.

Chile's last known case of a person catching rabies from a dog dates back to 1972.

What "elimination" actually means here

Rabies is a virus that spreads through the saliva of an infected animal, usually through a bite or scratch.

Once symptoms set in, it is almost always fatal.

But the disease can be stopped before it reaches that point, through vaccinating dogs, watching for the virus in animals, and getting bite victims treated quickly.

WHO validation does not mean rabies has vanished everywhere in the world, or even everywhere in Chile's animal population.

It means a country has proven, with evidence, that dogs are no longer spreading the virus to people, and that its health system is strong enough to catch and stop any case that tries to come back.

To earn that recognition, Chile had to show more than an absence of cases.

It submitted a technical file to health authorities documenting its surveillance, laboratories, vaccination programmes and emergency response systems.

An independent panel of international experts, coordinated through the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO, the WHO's regional office for the Americas), reviewed the file and confirmed the country met the required standard.

Five decades of quiet, unglamorous work

Chile's achievement was not the result of a single breakthrough.

It came from a public health programme that has run for generations: free mass vaccination drives for dogs and cats, trained teams watching for the virus in animals, stronger laboratory testing, and making sure anyone bitten by a suspect animal gets treated without delay.

More recently, the country has extended that watchfulness to its borders, since land crossings from neighbouring countries are considered higher risk for the virus re-entering. Community education, run largely through local municipalities, has also been part of the effort throughout.

Chile's Minister of Health, Dr May Chomalí, credited that local groundwork directly.

"Without communities, without municipalities and without public policy, a certification such as this cannot be achieved," she said in the WHO statement.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the outcome a result of "sustained investment in public health," while Dr Jarbas Barbosa, PAHO's director, said it showed eliminating dog-transmitted rabies is "achievable and sustainable" when countries keep the underlying systems running for the long term.

A regional pattern, and a global gap

Chile is not the first country in the Americas to reach this point.

Mexico was validated as free of dog-transmitted human rabies back in 2019, and WHO validated Bhutan for the same achievement just ten days before Chile, on 4 September 2026.

Across the wider Americas region, dog-mediated rabies deaths in people have fallen by more than 98 percent since 1983, and only a handful of cases are now reported across the whole region each year.

That regional progress stands apart from the picture elsewhere.

Rabies still kills an estimated 59,000 people worldwide every year, according to WHO's rabies fact sheet, with more than 95 percent of those deaths in Africa and Asia, mostly among people bitten by dogs who could not get treated in time.

Dog bites account for up to 99 percent of all human rabies cases globally.

Chile's case adds to a broader push under PAHO's Disease Elimination Initiative, which aims to wipe out more than 30 communicable diseases across the Americas by 2030.

It is also Chile's second disease elimination win this year alone. In March, WHO verified Chile as the first country in the Americas to eliminate leprosy.

Why it does not end here

WHO's validation is not a permanent guarantee.

It comes with a requirement that Chile keep its surveillance, laboratory and vaccination systems running indefinitely, precisely because the virus could re-enter through an infected animal crossing a border or arriving with wildlife.

That is why Chile's post-validation plans still include expanded monitoring at border areas flagged as higher risk.

Sources:World Health Organization, news release, 14 September 2026; Pan American Health Organization media statement, 14 September 2026; WHO Rabies fact sheet, 5 June 2024.