Mission Rabies delivers life-saving lessons to five million children

Mission Rabies is celebrating educating five million children worldwide since the charity was founded in 2013.

The milestone is a result of the charity’s work delivering rabies prevention lessons to children in schools and local community groups in rabies hotspots.

Mission Rabies was delivering a prevention programme to control an outbreak of rabies and save children’s lives in Ghana when the milestone was hit.

Rabies victims

Rabies kills around 59,000 people a year, the majority of whom are children below 15-years-old, and the disease still persists in impoverished communities and rural regions across Africa and Asia.

Mission Rabies runs mass dog vaccination campaigns and community education programmes in the world’s worst hotspots for the disease, such as India and Malawi, in partnership with the local governments and other non-governmental organisations.

The educational sessions have increased awareness of rabies while empowering children, their teachers and their families with the knowledge needed to protect themselves from dog bites, prevent rabies, and save lives.

‘Amazing’

UK vet Luke Gamble, who founded the charity in 2013, said: “It is amazing to reach this milestone. Education, alongside vaccination and surveillance, is one of the cornerstones in eliminating canine transmitted rabies.

“Explaining what rabies is, how to avoid being bitten by a dog, and what to do if you are bitten by a dog, is fundamental in protecting communities.

“In places where PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis) is scarce and treatment options are limited, then our advice can mean the difference between life and death. I’m so proud of the Mission Rabies education teams; they are inspirational to have reached 5 million children and they have made a real difference in protecting children who are at risk of this terrible disease.”

For every school the Mission Rabies team visits, information is recorded via a “rabies app” to give real-time project management and mapped records of their reach. The charity’s local teams keep in touch with schools and communities, to receive feedback and to provide ongoing support.

Important

Murugan Appupillai, the charity’s education director, India, said 100 children died of rabies every day. He said: “Many children in rabies endemic countries care for a dog in their household, or play alongside street dogs on the way to and from school. Death is inevitable once symptoms develop, which is why receiving post-exposure treatment is so vital.

“It really is a lack of awareness that kills people. If the risks are widely understood and appropriate dog bite treatment known, then rabies is 100% preventable.”

Lessons

Mission Rabies’ education team delivers rabies prevention lessons to children aged 5 to 16 – focusing particularly on primary schools. Lessons cover the dangers of rabies, how to be safe around dogs and the steps to take if bitten by a potentially rabid dog.

The team also encourages members of the public to bring their dogs for vaccination. Most (99%) of rabies cases are caused by dog bites, so mass canine vaccination can rid an area of rabies.

To find out more about Mission Rabies, visit its website.