Breaking Rabies Boundaries: A Record-Breaking World Rabies Day 2024

The theme of Breaking Rabies Boundaries perfectly captured this year’s unprecedented success for World Rabies Day (WRD) 2024. Across the globe, communities, advocates, and professionals joined forces to push the limits of rabies awareness and prevention, marking this year as the most impactful WRD yet.

With an astounding 415 events across 67 countries—the highest number on record—WRD 2024 reached communities in every corner of the world. Events ranged from large-scale vaccination drives and educational sessions to sports events and social media campaigns. Each activity broke through barriers, expanding rabies knowledge, promoting safe practices, and advancing a shared goal: a rabies-free world.

Educational engagement also reached new heights, with the GARC Education Platform seeing an impressive 1,244 graduates in September alone. This surge reflects a growing commitment to empowering people with practical rabies knowledge. Courses, now more accessible than ever in multiple languages, have enabled a global community of advocates to learn, share, and inspire change.

Social media presence made a powerful impact this World Rabies Day, with Rabies Ambassadors taking the spotlight in a truly boundary-breaking campaign. Reels from the Ambassadors collectively reached 37.9K viewers, delivering powerful WRD messages to fresh, diverse audiences outside of traditional rabies networks. This outreach expanded even further through global partnerships—FAO Livestock's WRD tweet alone garnered an impressive 2.3K reach, while joint communications with WOAH and GARC achieved 314 reactions across platforms. GAVI, the vaccine alliance, highlighted their instrumental support and willingness to break boundaries in rabies elimination efforts with their WRD collaborative posts. These, and the many other joint efforts among UAR forum members and all the other rabies stakeholders around the world further highlighted the importance of breaking rabies boundaries by uniting organizations and communities. Each of these efforts underscored the theme of Breaking Rabies Boundaries, showing that through collaborative and expansive social outreach, we can bring rabies awareness to new heights.

The international stage was also abuzz with activity, with pivotal events like a joint press statement from the Quadripartite and GARC in Africa, the Rabies in Borneo conference, the ISNTD webinar, the FAO webinar and the WHO National Forum on Rabies Elimination in Ukraine. These and other engagements such as the joint communications with UAR Forum, allowed the international community to reinvigorate partnerships and emphasize community-based rabies prevention on a larger scale, reinforcing the importance of breaking through silos in rabies control.

The 2024 World Rabies Day Awards celebrated the inspiring efforts of advocates across the globe, with 60 nominations from 28 countries. This year’s awardees—hailing from India, Nepal, Malaysia, and the Philippines—represent the champions in rabies prevention, each recognized for innovative approaches, program impact and effective collaborations. With over 3,000 public votes cast for the nominees, support for these champions demonstrates a widespread desire for change.  

With each event, educational milestone, and inspiring story, Breaking Rabies Boundaries has not only highlighted the global rabies fight but has shown the power of collective action. WRD 2024 has opened new doors, reached new audiences, and strengthened the commitment to rabies elimination. By breaking boundaries together, we’re one step closer to a rabies-free world.

Article by: Kerenza Vlastou, Outreach Manager, GARC