Rabies - 100% fatal, but 100% preventable with rabies vaccination
Mass rabies vaccination of the stray dog population is one of the easiest ways to prevent the spread of the disease. By vaccinating at least 70% of a dog population, “herd immunity” is established. This helps to break the cycle of transmission among dogs. And if dogs are not getting rabies, then they are not transmitting it to people.
To put an end to rabies, it is much faster and easier to vaccinate dogs rather than people. This is because they are the primary reservoir of the virus.
To find out the schedule for vaccinating your pet against rabies, read our blog post.
What Manali Strays does to tackle the rabies problem
- Every dog that we sterilise or rescue is vaccinated against rabies.
- We always encourage pet parents to get their dogs and cats vaccinated.
- Each year, we hold rabies vaccination camps, where we spend several days vaccinating every free-roaming dog that we see.
- Each year we vaccinate approximately 1000 dogs against rabies.
- We work with school children on our Compassion Education Program, to teaching about rabies, dog bite prevention, and how to treat all animals with compassion and respect.
Prior to the establishment of Manali Strays,very few dogs were vaccinated against rabies. A few pets would receive a vaccine if their owners knew about it.
Manali Strays was founded on World Rabies day and our very first act as an animal welfare organisation was to carry out a rabies vaccination drive in Manali town.
Since then we have continued this tradition and held rabies vaccination camps every year around World Rabies Day. Each year, a different area of Kullu district is chosen so we can maximise our impact.
Rabies resources
There is an abundance of information and organizations around the world whose primary purpose is to tackle rabies, educate about rabies, and provide up to date information about rabies and rabies vaccination.