Mission Rabies, the charity dedicated to eliminating Rabies worldwide, announced its new campaign “The Final Rabies Generation” that launches today on World Rabies Day.
The Campaign aims to raise awareness for their life-saving programs in countries including; India, Malawi, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Cambodia, where the projects have already vaccinated over 1.3m dogs since they began in 2013. The Charity vaccinates dogs because 99% of all human rabies cases are caused by an infected dog bite.
Mass-culling of dogs doesn’t work, and is desperately cruel – but by vaccinating them, it is possible to establish herd immunity, break the rate of transmission and save the lives of innocent children every single day.
Because there is already an effective vaccine, Mission Rabies has a positive message of hope; that we can be the Final Rabies Generation. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a target of no human deaths from rabies by 2030. That’s ten years to end the suffering caused by rabies and forever write this generation into the history books for all the right reasons.
Of the campaign announcement, Mission Rabies’ CEO, Luke Gamble, said “Every year, millions of people receive rabies vaccinations to enable them to travel to rabies endemic countries. No-one thinks twice about the people living in these countries, who can’t afford those vaccinations themselves. In many countries they can’t even access them. Rabies has a devastating impact on children and their families in many parts of the world – and we need to change that. With The Final Rabies Generation campaign, we’re putting rabies on the agenda, both so that children living in fear of this deadly disease can have hope for the future, and so that everyone realises this is a shared mission we can achieve together.”
To meet this WHO target by 2030, Mission Rabies is;
- Vaccinating at least 70% of targeted canine populations to create herd immunity and slash the R number of the disease from 2 to below 1.
- Sending over 300 trained volunteers, including skilled vets, to rabies hot spots every year – implementing rabies vaccinations programmes in places where they are most needed.
- Launching their Final Rabies Generation campaign across online and print to raise vital awareness and funding.
Readers can find more information on the work being done by Mission Rabies and how they can get involved by going to www.finalrabiesgeneration.org.
