World Rabies Day is an international campaign which is observed on September 28.

• World Rabies Day is celebrated annually throughout the world to raise awareness about rabies prevention and to highlight progress in defeating this horrifying disease. 28 September also marks the anniversary of Louis Pasteur’s death, the French chemist and microbiologist, who developed the first rabies vaccine.

• Today, safe and effective animal and human vaccines are among the important tools that exist to eliminate human deaths from rabies while awareness is the key driver for success of communities to engage in effective rabies prevention.

• The theme for 2016 is Rabies: Educate. Vaccinate. Eliminate. which emphasises the two crucial actions that communities can do to prevent rabies. It also reflects the global target to eliminate all human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030.

• Rabies, although preventable, results in thousands of human deaths each year. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that annually, an average of 60 000 human deaths occur worldwide. Rabies has the highest death rate of any human infectious disease and essentially 100% of humans who contract rabies disease will die usually very painful deaths.

• Every rabies death is preventable; therefore it is critical to raise awareness of what can be done to prevent deaths.

• Animal rabies is present throughout South Africa and neighbouring countries. About 10 human cases are laboratory confirmed in South Africa annually, however in 2006 one of our provinces experienced an outbreak, which resulted in more than 30 cases being confirmed nationally.