World Rabies Day 2013

World Rabies Day is in its seventh year, and we wanted to update you on our plans to support your events on September 28th. World Rabies Day 2012 was a big success, with over 700 activities organised in at least 107 countries across the world, many of them by committed volunteers in areas with few resources. Over 125,000 of you took part in these events, which included raising awareness, vaccinating animals and discussing current rabies. The theme for 2012 was getting the message out about rabies prevention, and it was taken into schools, communities and universities.

This year’s theme is Rabies: understand it to defeat it, and we encourage everyone to learn more about the issues around rabies and get involved to do something about it. In the coming weeks we’ll be merging the current World Rabies Day website with the Global Alliance for Rabies Control website to create www.rabiesalliance.org. This new website will give you an improved platform with more features to share your events and get resources and logos for your work.

You’ll be able to publicise forthcoming events in your area, attracting a greater audience. And once your event has been completed, you’ll be able to upload photos and share information. You’ll even be able to download certificates for event organisers. The resource library has awareness and educational materials for different audiences, including teachers, veterinarians, doctors, pet owners and community workers. These are for you to use and free of charge. Please feel free to download them. We also have World Rabies Day logos in many languages and, if you can’t find your own, we can work with you to create new logos. Also, if you have materials of your own that you’d like to share for others to use, we’d be happy to host them on our website.

Finally, if you’re looking for help with your media and supporter outreach, we’re creating toolkits that you can modify to increase interest in your World Rabies Day events. We’re also building a photobank of images with copyright permission to use straight away with the media. Following feedback from webinar participants, we have decided to run smaller webinars throughout the year around different themes rather than run a big webinar near World Rabies Day. In this way we hope to encourage more participation and cover the subjects in greater detail.

By giving us a ‘like’on Facebook and following us on Twitter you keep up to date with the latest news, particularly as we expand on our plans in the run-up to World Rabies Day. This is also an easy and practical step you can take to help spread awareness to other people about rabies prevention. So, please stay in touch! We look forward to hearing more about your plans for World Rabies Day, and hope to work together with you to make World Rabies Day bigger than ever.

Contributed by Deepashree Balaram, on behalf of the WRD team. You can contact the WRD team through the website, or at [email protected].