World Rabies Day is celebrated annually on 28th September to raise awareness and advocate for the global elimination of rabies. It is also about highlighting progress in defeating this deadly disease. This World Rabies Day we are shining a spotlight on our flagship project, Mission Rabies, fighting to end rabies, a deadly disease that takes a life every 9 minutes.
Mission Rabies: Overview
In 2003, Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) began a mission to improve animal welfare around the world. As WVS grew, Luke Gamble, our CEO and founder, launched the Mission Rabies project in 2013, to protect people and animals living in areas affected by rabies.
“A decade after the start of WVS, recognising the urgent need to combat the deadly but preventable menace of rabies, Mission Rabies was born. With a focused approach, this initiative took on the daunting task of rabies elimination, one community at a time. To see it grow from a fledgling project into a global force has been nothing short of awe-inspiring.” Luke Gamble, CEO and founder of WVS.
Mission Rabies launched in India – the world’s hotspot for rabies. Goa was identified as an ideal location to set the standard of rabies elimination across India. We then started to establish and expand our vaccination, education, and surveillance programmes in more countries, including Malawi, Uganda, and Tanzania.
India and Malawi became flagship projects, as two rabies endemic countries, and we established permanent teams in-country, working in collaboration with local governments and valued partners. These two projects have come to demonstrate how effective rabies control can be implemented at scale. Alongside these projects, we run programmes in many global rabies hotspots.
Crucially, our programmes are working; human rabies deaths are down in our project areas and Goa was declared a ‘Rabies Controlled Area’ in 2021 – the very first Indian state to achieve this status.
About Rabies
Rabies is one of the world’s deadliest and oldest known diseases. Rabies still causes the death of at least 59,000 people a year, with rabies deaths being massively underreported and systemically ignored. The disease disproportionately impacts upon the world’s most disadvantage areas, with the poorest countries carrying the greatest burden.
Dogs are one of the animals most prone to rabies. They serve as a reservoir for the disease and are the main source of transmission to humans. With 99% of human rabies cases being caused by an infected dog bite, we have the power to change this; by taking a One Health approach we can protect the lives of people and animals.
Mission Rabies: The Goal
Mission Rabies is addressing the source of the problem: canine rabies.
Science shows that the most effective way to control rabies is through vaccination of dogs in places where rabies is endemic. We head to rabies hotspots and run mass vaccination campaigns. Our vaccination programmes aim for 70% vaccination rate is rabies hotspots every year to achieve herd immunity. Alongside this we educate children and communities to equip them with the crucial knowledge to protect themselves. We also establish sustainable surveillance systems in rabies hotspots to ensure the safety of communities by quickly responding to suspected cases.
Through our programmes, 8.2 million children have been educated with crucial information on rabies and over 4.3 million dogs have been given life-saving vaccinations.
Vaccination in action: our latest campaigns
India
India has a third of all estimated human rabies cases. Mission Rabies works in several rabies hotspots areas in India. In May, we worked alongside Kodaikanal Society for the Protection and Care for Animals (KSPCA) and other partners to deliver a one-week intensive dog vaccination drive in Kodaikanal, a town in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu. The teams worked incredibly hard to vaccinate 3,751 dogs against rabies. As part of the campaign, the general public were educated about rabies prevention, necessary precautions after a dog bite, and the importance of responsible pet ownership.
Uganda
We have been working in Uganda since 2015, across several project regions, to protect communities from this deadly threat. In August our teams vaccinated 2,885 dogs within Kabale, Rukiga and Rubanda Districts in the Southwestern region of Uganda, protecting them and the communities they live amongst. Alongside this, our experienced educators conducted an education campaign, visiting schools to give crucial lessons to children on how to protect themselves from rabies and avoid dog bites. Over just four days these messages were delivered to 55,779 children in 172 schools.
Mozambique
Rabies is a significant public health risk in Mozambique – causing more than 1,300 deaths every year. In addition to this, rabies is also a great economic burden with the cost of rabies vaccines and post-exposure vaccines being too high for the vast majority of people. In 2023, we launched our education programme, providing children with crucial information on rabies control. In September our teams returned to Mozambique and set up static point vaccination clinics throughout Guija and Chokwe districts, in partnership with Universidade Eduardo Moundlane. The teams vaccinated 5,122 dogs against rabies.
The All-Terrain Clinic (ATC)
At WVS we are dedicated to creating safe, stable and healthy dog populations with animal welfare at the forefront. The overpopulation of free-roaming dogs leads to overcrowding, which results in the spread of deadly diseases, like rabies. Sterilisation improves animal welfare by controlling the population, whilst canine rabies vaccinations ensure a healthy dog population by stopping the spread of rabies amongst dogs and to humans. The ATC, a self-sufficient mobile veterinary hospital provides these vital services, as well as surgical training courses for veterinary professionals, to communities all around India. In addition, the ATC travels across India championing humane population control, animal welfare and rabies control.
Emergency Response
In August a child was severely injured from a dog attack in Bajarswangi, Chatrapati Sambhjinagar district in India. The ATC team swifty responded by launching an emergency intervention programme to address immediate risks and reinforced rabies prevention in the area. During this one-day programme, our team vaccinated 62 dogs and cats against rabies and completed an awareness campaign on rabies prevention and responsible pet owners. We also ensured that the child received the life-saving post-exposure vaccinations they needed. Following on from this response, an Animal Birth Control camp was organised in the area where 118 free roaming dogs were sterilised and vaccinated.
Mass Vaccination Campaigns
Cambodia
In May and June 2023, we ran a mass vaccination campaign in Cambodia. In just ten working days, 74,983 free rabies vaccinations were administered across Phnom Penh and Kandal Provinces, making this the country’s biggest canine rabies vaccination project to date.
In October 2024, we are returning to Cambodia for another mass vaccination campaign. Follow Mission Rabies on Instagram or Facebook for updates on this exciting campaign.
Mumbai, India
In February and March 2024, we delivered an intensive vaccination campaign in Mumbai, India. This campaign focused on the vaccination of free-roaming dogs, with 26,951 dogs receiving life-saving vaccinations.
We will be returning to Mumbai in 2025, register your interest in volunteering to be the first to hear when applications open.
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