Celebrate the third annual World Rabies Day

International Report

-- Today is the third annual observance of World Rabies Day, a glocal rabies awareness campaign spearheaded by the United Kingdom charity Alliance for Rabies Control (ARC) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 75 countries now participate in World Rabies Day events, which can include vaccination clinics, lectures and education programs, parades, festivals, and dog walks.

In honor of the third annual observance of World Rabies Day, the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University is hosting a discussion about the global impact of rabies on Sept. 28 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Agnes Varis Auditorium.

World Rabies Day was observed a little earlier in Kansas, where the World Rabies Day National Symposium was conducted Sept. The event featured a discussion of the One Health Initiative in addition to presentations on rabies prevention and control.

World Rabies Day perhaps takes on greater significance this year, since it comes just weeks after the release of a new report from the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) that indicated cats were four times more likely that dogs to be infected with rabies, perhaps because they’re vaccinated less and roam outdoors unsupervised more often than dogs. The data in the report was collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and appears in a new AVMA rabies backgrounder.

Another notable development in the rabies arena since last year’s observance of World Rabies Day was the signing of a collaborative rabies management plan between the U.S., Canada and Mexico last October. The plan involves the efforts of representatives from each country in the fields of agriculture, public health and wildlife management, and aims to strengthen cooperation between the North American neighbors. Its signing was the culmination of three years of work by the CDC, APHIS's wildlife services program, and the Canadian and Mexican governments to establish long-term wildlife rabies management goals. The plan calls for annual meetings to share information about vaccines, wildlife management, population control and surveillance techniques.

For more information about World Rabies Day, click here.