World Rabies Day 2024
World Rabies Day is the biggest event on the global rabies calendar, coordinated by GARC and it has been commemorated every year on September 28 – the anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur – since 2007. World Rabies Day aims to raise awareness and advocate for rabies elimination globally. It is an event designed to be inclusive, uniting people, organizations, and stakeholders across all sectors against rabies – because together we can eliminate rabies! With this concept of overcoming the challenges that prevent us from working together in mind, the theme for this year’s World Rabies Day is:
Breaking Rabies Boundaries
Why this theme?
Every year, we select a theme that we believe is most relevant to the current situation and global trends for rabies and also health in general. This year, we want to highlight the need to go beyond the norm and to break through the boundaries that prevent us from achieving rabies elimination. We need to move beyond the status quo so that we can achieve our collective goal of Zero by 30. Because so many boundaries potentially exist that prevent us from achieving rabies elimination, the theme has been made purposefully open so that it can be used to address any of these boundaries, ranging from One Health, collaboration across diseases, boundaries to vaccination and many more. In addition, there is a double meaning in the theme in that rabies itself breaks international boundaries as rabies is a transboundary disease.
Read more in detail about the concept and the theme in our newsletter article.
The Banner design:
What’s next?
The next step would be to register your World Rabies Day 2024 event! Get together with partners or other interested people in your community and start working together towards our goal of Zero by 30 and a better future for all.
Under this year’s theme, any rabies elimination work can be undertaken. We know that many boundaries exist and your World Rabies Day event can focus on addressing those boundaries that are currently inhibiting your own progress, whether they are boundaries that are affecting rabies education, vaccination, awareness, collaboration or anything else. This means that you can celebrate World Rabies Day 2024 with a vaccination campaign, education initiatives, raising awareness, improving or undertaking laboratory diagnosis, sharing, capturing or reporting rabies data, partnering with others, or advocating for its elimination. Run dog population management campaigns, organize a competition, or share social media messages with your followers. Even if you are in a dog-rabies free country, you can still raise awareness about PEP and bite prevention when travelling, share messages online, or help raise money for rabies elimination elsewhere.
Whatever your activity of choice and wherever you are, we all need to work to break those boundaries that prevent us from achieving rabies elimination, and beyond that, health for all!