The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) unveils new tools to support the fight against rabies

Rabies is everyone's concern: the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) has launched a new web portal and an interactive infographic on rabies to raise awareness on the disease and to encourage the mobilisation of the international community around this cause.

What is rabies? How can it be controlled? How can we react? A wide range of answers can now be found on the new rabies web portal which the OIE uploaded on the occasion of the World Rabies Day 2014. This platform brings together a wealth of information on rabies and on action taken worldwide to combat the disease including the new concept of regional vaccine bank. It does not only contain technical information, but also a whole page devoted to OIE's communication tools, including disease information summaries, educational material, videos and statements.

This platform notably displays the new OIE’s interactive infographic on rabies, a very useful device to better know, understand, and combat the disease. Through it, the OIE recalls key facts on rabies and gives access to various documents and links. It is available in English, French, Spanish and Russian.

These new tools address a broad audience and the OIE encourages it to use and disseminate them as widely as possible, since everyone has their contribution to make to the global fight against rabies.

"In addition to the OIE's missions of setting standards and promoting international solidarity in order to prevent and control rabies, it is essential to inform populations on the ravages brought about by this devastating disease," stresses Dr. Bernard Vallat, Director General of the OIE. "Rabies is a disease that is all too often under-estimated, and it is urgent for all to become aware of the fact that there are solutions. Vaccinating 70% of dogs in risk areas would make it possible to eliminate rabies in humans. Every ten minutes, somebody somewhere in the world dies of rabies. Each year, rabies claims around 70,000 human victims, mainly children in developing countries. However, rabies can be eliminated. That is why, today, every rabies victim is one victim too many.”

OIE and GARC have been working together for years, particularly on global human canine‐mediated rabies elimination and the development of regional rabies control and elimination strategies, including dog vaccination campaigns and demographic control of dog populations. They signed a cooperation agreement in September 2014 to pursue and strengthen their collaboration in the future.

 

Contributed by the Communication Unit at OIE. Please share the link to the new infographic (http://www.oie.int/infographic/rabies/) or integrate it into your website (<iframe src="http://www.oie.int/infographic/rabies/"  border="0" scrolling="yes" height="650" width="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>).