We love sharing – here is the World Rabies Day theme for 2023, shared with you!

This year’s World Rabies Day theme builds on the 2022 success of One Health, taking it a step further to focus more on collaboration, equality, and the strengthening of health systems. It is this journey that brought us to France’s 1600’s, Alexandre Dumas and the theme of “Rabies: All for 1, One Health for All”.  The Three Musketeers can be seen as a team of individuals who overcame strife and injustice to achieve their goals: a clear correlation between the struggles of the stakeholders in rabies control and our joint efforts to eliminate the disease. There is a need for the global community to overcome injustice (imbalanced health systems) and strife to achieve our global goal of Zero By 30.

Although it emphasizes the need for equality to address health system weaknesses and failures in their inability to provide equitable access to all, the theme can also be broken down into smaller parts, each with their own connotations:

• “All for 1” expresses the responsibility each and every one of us has in the battle to eliminate rabies. All people can work towards One Health, and everyone can contribute to saving a life. Communities can work together to help individual people and animals, and everyone can work towards a single goal effectively.
• Number 1 can refer to a single person making a difference, to a community, to our one goal, to how one vaccinated animal protects all, and how a single course of PEP can save a life.

The theme addresses key trends within the rabies community, including collaboration seen through the United Against Rabies Forum and discussions and actions to operationalize One Health – improving human, animal, and environmental health as the three are inextricably linked. Furthermore, it addresses key global trends, with the launch of the Pandemic Prevention Fund from the World Bank and the strong need to strengthen overall health systems. This can be achieved by building capacity through rabies control and elimination efforts and laying the foundation for other disease/health interventions.

Within the Zero by 30: Global Strategic Plan, One Health is a core concept and is mentioned in light of the following:

1)    That rabies elimination is a model for One Health collaboration.

2)    The development of National Strategic Plans for rabies elimination.

3)    International collaboration includes partners from all sectors.

The banner designed for this year’s theme brings together all key elements of rabies prevention, highlighting the need for collaboration and a carefully mixed cocktail of approaches: we cannot eliminate rabies through just vaccinating dogs or just collecting data. We cannot eliminate rabies through education alone or only PEP access. Each situation needs its own tailored approach to educate the public, vaccinate dogs, monitor cases and work with all relevant authorities, among all the other important aspects that are needed to create a truly One Health rabies elimination strategy.

Rabies affects everyone, whether in endemic or rabies-free countries and One Health is for everyone. In this light, #Every1 needs to participate in eliminating rabies and achieving One Health! Join us this World Rabies Day as we join together. Event registration is open - register your event now!