Vaccinating dogs is the key to controlling rabies worldwide, say experts. However, world leaders seem to lack concern, at least to the extent of making a difference in the number of people who die every year from being infected with the rabies virus.

Over 60,000 people die each year from rabies, and most of these are children in Asia and Africa. Nearly all deaths by rabies can be attributed to bites by domestic dogs. Nearly all cases are fatal, once symptoms appear.

“The irony is that rabies is 100 percent preventable. People shouldn’t be dying at all,” said Guy Palmer, a veterinary infectious disease expert at Washington State University. Palmer and colleagues wrote a commentary on the matter that was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The commentary was timed to coincide with World Rabies Day. Wrote the authors, “Where dog rabies has been locally eliminated, the disease disappears in all species.”

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 15 million people are vaccinated against rabies every year worldwide after exposure to rabies. For most, however, the shots cost too much at $40 to $50 each.

“It is the poor who die; they are more frequently victims of rabid dog attacks, they suffer fatal delays in trying to access PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis), or simply cannot afford to pay for it,” Palmer and colleagues wrote.

In Tanzania, a program to vaccinate as many as 1,000 dogs a day has taken human deaths from rabies down from 50 each year to almost none. The WHO is struggling to raise funds and find cooperation to conduct similar operations elsewhere.

Canine rabies was eradicated in the U.S. in 2007 with vaccination.