Planning World Rabies Day 2012

Recent survey data indicating that WRD 2011 events spanned across a six month timeframe confirms that WRD is increasingly becoming a year-round initiative. Of those surveyed, 2 out of 3 people indicated using social media such as Facebook (78%), Google+ (34%) and YouTube (32%). To continually engage community members throughout the year, the WRD team is developing a social media strategy aimed at reaching new audiences, building new relationships, growing visibility and further increasing momentum. 

The WRD team is also working on several other projects to help facilitate action through the provision of education and awareness tools. First, the WRD website will undergo a slight facelift. By the end of March, a new resource library will be released allowing end-users to search for educational materials through open queries and sorted by categories such as language, world region and profession. This new improved interface will make finding educational materials much easier. In addition, a media catalog will be made available by mid-August containing images and videos received from WRD events over the past five years.

Second, the WRD team is developing Rabies Country Profiles; envisioned to serve as the one-stop-shop for comprehensive country-specific information about rabies. Examples of information to be included are demographics, mortality data, and physical locations for post-exposure prophylaxis. In addition to pre-existing records, the WRD team will garner new data from country experts, key stakeholders and research currently underway including the Global Burden Re-Assessment and Human Rabies Notifiability studies.  The first country profile is expected to be released by mid-June.

Lastly, the WRD team is working on developing a Webinar series for 2012. This open-source platform for rabies education is a crowd-favorite amongst the WRD community and we’d like to host more Webinars in more languages and focus on specific topics previously requested by our global community such as rabies in humans, livestock and bats and discussions on new biologics and field-based diagnostic testing procedures. If you have ideas for a Webinar in your country or would like to share educational resources or photos from your country on the WRD website, please contact us.

We are looking forward to providing updates throughout the year. For more
information about the World Rabies Day Campaign please contact [email protected].


Contributed by Peter Costa and Mylissia Stukey of the World Rabies Day team