Notice to Readers: World Rabies Day --- September 8, 2007

The first World Rabies Day will be observed on September 8, 2007, with the theme, "Working Together to Make Rabies History." On this day, CDC and its global partners will celebrate successes in rabies prevention and control, while recognizing the challenges of global canine rabies elimination, human rabies prevention, and wildlife rabies control. Events are planned in at least 61 countries and will include educational presentations, animal rabies vaccination clinics, rabies awareness campaigns, and fundraising activities.

Worldwide, uncontrolled rabies in dogs continues to be the main source of human rabies mortality, accounting for an estimated 55,000 deaths each year. In the United States, dog-to-dog transmission of rabies has been eliminated. However, importation of dogs from rabies-enzootic countries still represents a risk for reintroducing canine rabies into the United States. In addition, cases of rabies in U.S. wildlife have increased recently, with bats as the leading source of human rabies infections. In the United States, rabies remains a potential emerging threat through adaptation to new animal reservoirs, translocation of potentially infected animals, and inadequate vaccination coverage of domestic animals, particularly cats and dogs.

Around the world, the public health infrastructure, including local animal control programs, quarantine stations, veterinarians, and clinicians, will play a vital role in preserving the status of those countries already free from canine rabies and in advancing human rabies prevention worldwide. Additional information about World Rabies Day is available at http://www.cdc.gov/rabies or http//www.worldrabiesday.org.

Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of the date of publication.

Disclaimer   All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from ASCII text into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the electronic PDF version and/or the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables. An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800. Contact GPO for current prices.

Date last reviewed: 9/5/2007