To provide better clinical and public health management of the rabies outbreak in Sarawak, the objective of this research is to develop a better, faster, more sensitive, and use-friendly molecular diagnostic assay (real-time RT-PCR) for human rabies infection. The assay will be transferred to clinical service laboratory of major public hospitals in the state so that rabies diagnostics could be made available on-site in Sarawak.
This research also to determine the viral origin, transmission, and circulation pattern of the on-going rabies outbreak in Sarawak through phylogenetic analysis of complete RABV genome sequences of virus isolates obtained from the current rabies outbreak.