The Nuristan Provincial Reconstruction Team was fighting an outbreak of rabies in the province’s Titin Valley that had claimed the lives of four Afghan citizens, but they were not going at it alone.

The PRT gotten help from the Iowa National Guard’s 734th Agri-Business Development Team, which provided 300 doses of rabies vaccine. The vaccine was used to innoculate dogs in the area and did help avoid the slaughter of Titon Valley’s canines.

Being ADT’s veterinary officer, one of my areas of expertise is veterinary public health, and to provided technical advice to the Nuristan PRT, which did not have a veterinarian on staff. Vaccinating animal populations is the only effective way to bring a rabies outbreak like the one in Nuristan’s Titon Valley under control.

By delivering the vaccine we helped to get the rabies outbreak under control. Providing the rabies vaccine to the PRT had no downside. However, I did have one regret. We only wished that we could be there helping them.