Objective  To assess the disease burden of rabies in Jiangsu province for providing references to the development of rabies prevention and control strategies.

  Methods  We collected the data on rabies incidences reported in Jiangsu province during 2008 – 2018 and performed statistical analysis on the data. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) attributed to rabies mortalities were calculated with tools recommended by World Health Organization and human capital method was adopted to estimate economic burden caused by rabies incidents.

  Results  Totally 565 rabies cases were reported Jiangsu province during the 11 years; the male to female ratio was 1 : 0.42 for all the cases and more than 73% of the rabies mortalities were farmers. The estimated total life loss and the average annual life loss caused by rabies mortality were 12 318.22 years and 1 119.84 years; the rabies mortality related DALY intensity is 0.014 person-years/1 000 persons. The average annual loss of DALYs is 783.82 person-years for the males, which is significantly higher than that for the females (t = 2.984, P < 0.05); the DALYs lost due to rabies mortality cases aged 45 – 59 years accounted for 35.15% of the total DALYs loss. The DALY intensity is the highest (0.0219 person-years/1 000 persons) for the population aged 70 – 79 years. The annual indirect economic burden related to the reported rabies incidents was 49.29 million yuan RMB and the highest proportion of the indirect economic burden is attributed to rabies mortalities aged 45 – 59 years.

  Conclusion  During 2008 – 2018 in Jiangsu province, major disease burden of rabies is for male population and population aged 45 – 59 years and the disease burden of rabies is also relatively high for the population under 15 years of age, suggesting that targeted strategies should be developed for rabies prevention among those populations.