September 28th – World Rabies Day

World Rabies Day was created to raise awareness and advocate for rabies elimination globally and is designed to unite all people, organizations, and stakeholders against rabies.

World Rabies Day is held every year on September 28. This date was chosen as it is the anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur – the first person to successfully create a vaccine against rabies.
Collaboration is critical for success and everyone is encouraged to take part. The only way that we can eliminate rabies and end the needless suffering is by working together and uniting towards a common goal.
World Rabies Day is held every year on September 28th. This date was chosen because it is the anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur, the first person to successfully develop a rabies vaccine.

This year’s World Rabies Day theme is: “Rabies: Facts, not Fear”.
Cooperation is important and crucial for success and for everyone to be encouraged to participate. The only way to prevent rabies and end unnecessary suffering is to work together and unite to achieve a common goal.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has raised many doubts and misconceptions about diseases, their spread and about vaccination in general. Because of this, there has been some hesitancy about the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines in many countries and many people are afraid to get vaccinated. For rabies, this is nothing new, as fears, misconceptions and misinformation about the disease and its prevention dates back hundreds of years. For that reason, this year’s theme is focused on sharing facts about rabies, and not spreading fear about the disease by relying on misinformation and myths.

Facts are essential for raising disease awareness, preventing rabies cases, having the animal population vaccinated, and educating people about the dangers of rabies and how to prevent it. Without facts we would not have data for decision-makers to inform them of the serious nature of the disease. We would not be able to advocate for its elimination and the burden of the disease would remain unknown, resulting in tens of thousands of people and animals continuing to die from rabies each year. Let us use facts to raise awareness and educate others about rabies.

• Infection causes tens of thousands of deaths every year, mainly in Asia and Africa;
• 40% of people bitten by suspect rabid animals are children under 15 years of age;
• Dogs are the main source of human rabies deaths, contributing up to 99% of all rabies transmissions to humans.

It is important to:

• increase vaccination of dogs in developing countries;
• educate dog bite prevention for children;
• react to post bite treatment. Immediate, thorough wound washing with soap and water for a minimum of 15 minutes after contact with a suspect rabid animal is crucial and can save lives. In countries with rabies, ALL animal bites, scratches and licks to broken skin must be treated seriously. Further medical advice is still needed;
• to prevent post bite rabies vaccination the onset of rabies. Every year, more than 15 million people worldwide receive a post-bite vaccination. This is estimated to prevent hundreds of thousands of rabies deaths annually.

More information:

https://rabiesalliance.org/news/world-rabies-day-2021-theme

https://www.who.int/health-topics/rabies#tab=tab_1