What is rabies?
Rabies is a preventable viral disease of mammals most often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal. The vast majority of rabies cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) each year occur in wild animals like raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes.
The rabies virus infects the central nervous system, ultimately causing disease in the brain and death. The early symptoms of rabies in people are similar to that of many other illnesses, including fever, headache, and general weakness or discomfort. As the disease progresses, more specific symptoms appear and may include insomnia, anxiety, confusion, slight or partial paralysis, excitation, hallucinations, agitation, hypersalivation (increase in saliva), difficulty swallowing, and hydrophobia (fear of water). Death usually occurs within days of the onset of these symptoms.
World Rabies Awareness Day is celebrated annually to raise awareness about rabies prevention and to highlight progress in defeating this horrifying disease.
28 September also marks the anniversary of Louis Pasteur’s death, the French chemist and microbiologist who developed the first rabies vaccine.
Today, safe and efficacious animal and human vaccines are among the important tools that exist to eliminate human deaths from rabies while awareness is the key driver for success of communities to engage in effective rabies prevention.
Rabies: Share the message. Save a life.
World Rabies Day is the first and only global day of action and awareness for rabies prevention. It is an opportunity to unite as a community and for individuals, NGOs and governments to connect and share their work.
Created and coordinated annually by GARC, World Rabies Day, September 28th, focuses on rabies endemic countries, to increase community awareness of the disease and its prevention. World Rabies Day also raises the profile of national and local control programmes and acts as a springboard for year-round capacity building and awareness.
World Rabies Day is a great annual opportunity to increase awareness by holding an event, getting the media interested in your work and connecting with the wider rabies prevention community.
The World Rabies Day 2018 theme is Rabies: Share the message. Save a life. This highlights the importance of education and awareness to prevent rabies. You can use this at many levels to share different messages, from the policy-level message to governments to commit to the 2030 deadline, to community-level messages about vaccinating dogs and treating bite wounds, and dog bite prevention education for school children.
For more information on prevention and control, check out this information from the CDC.
