Key points
- Every year, rabies kills 70,000 people worldwide.
- Dogs cause 99% of human rabies deaths outside the U.S.
- Limited public health resources in some regions limit rabies prevention efforts despite having effective human and animal vaccines for over 100 years.
- CDC collaborates with global partners to support rabies elimination and control efforts across the globe.
Overview
While dogs remain the biggest concern for human rabies exposures globally, other species of wildlife also maintain rabies in many parts of the world. In certain parts of the world, wildlife like bats, foxes, jackals, mongooses, skunks, and others transmit rabies regardless of the presence of rabies in dogs.
Many countries have not looked for rabies in local wildlife, and it is likely that yet-undetected wildlife also maintain the virus.
World Rabies Day
World Rabies Day is celebrated on September 28th to honor Louis Pasteur, the developer of the rabies vaccine. The goal of this observance day is to raise global awareness about rabies prevention. Despite being 100% preventable, rabies still claims nearly 70,000 lives annually. CDC collaborates with many agencies and organizations to promote World Rabies Day worldwide.
How CDC is making a difference
CDC partners globally to enhance rabies prevention, tracking, and control in both humans and animals. CDC provides training programs to help improve diagnostic testing, surveillance, and dog vaccination campaigns.
CDC also prioritizes educating communities so that they can identify rabies symptoms and respond to animal bites.
Guinea
From 2023 to 2024, Guinea made significant progress towards improving national rabies control activities, thanks to a collaboration between CDC, the nonprofit Mission Rabies, Guinea National Directorate of Veterinary Services (DNVS), and many other local partners.
In total, over 88,000 animals (mostly dogs) were vaccinated across 10 high-risk communities. The Guinea team used the Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) smartphone application to document key information about the animal, which helps experts at CDC better identify communities at high-risk for rabies.
The app allowed CDC staff to provide real-time assistance on campaign management. Following these campaigns, a post-vaccination evaluation was conducted, which showed that nearly 70% of the dogs were vaccinated, which is necessary to stop rabies from spreading in dogs.
Haiti
Haiti has the highest rate of human deaths from rabies in the Western Hemisphere. In the years after the massive earthquake in 2010 devastated Haiti's rabies control program, the CDC estimated that more than 100 people died from rabies each year.
To protect people from rabies, the CDC worked with the Government of Haiti and the International Rabies Taskforce to implement a community-based program that works with bite victims to find the animal that bit them and uses veterinary assessments and diagnostic testing to support bite victims' medical care decisions.
In April of 2024, one of Haiti's rabies experts was called to respond to a dog that had bitten a young child in the face. After a search through the community, the dog was found and tested positive for rabies. This information was critical in convincing this family to seek out rabies vaccination, which can cost as much as 3 months' salary in countries like Haiti. Each year, this program helps over 2,000 bite victims make the important decision to seek rabies vaccination.
Partners in rabies control
The rabies program at CDC serves as a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center, a World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) Reference Laboratory for Rabies, and a founding partner of the International Rabies Taskforce (IRT). As a WHO Collaborating Center and WOAH Reference Laboratory for rabies, the CDC provides diagnostic services to rabies-endemic countries and provides technical support to countries to achieve rabies elimination.
The IRT is a public-private partnership with the organization Mission Rabies and vaccine manufacturer MSD Animal Health. Under this umbrella, the organization assists rabies-endemic countries with mass dog vaccination campaign planning, implementation, and evaluation. They also improve rabies surveillance using the Rabies Exposure and Contact Tracing (REACT) App. As a result of this partnership, in 2023, over one million dogs were vaccinated against rabies and over 25,000 rabid animals were investigated.
To achieve the goal of eliminating rabies deaths by 2030, the CDC has established partnerships with a number of organizations and health ministries around the world. Key collaborators in this global effort include: