Ethiopian Public Health Institute Organizes World Rabies Day
With the objective of creating public awareness among professionals and stakeholders, the World Rabies Day (WRD) was colorfully celebrated at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) premises on September 26, 2015.
The main theme of this year’s WRD was ‘End Rabies Together’ which promotes ‘the best way to end human rabies deaths is by vaccinating dogs. Vaccinating dogs protects people too’.
This year’s event is unique as all stakeholders colorfully celebrated the day in connection with the establishment of Pan African Rabies Control Network (PARaCoN) to eliminate dog mediated human rabies in 2030 through Step wise Approach Rabies Elimination (SARE) across the African Continent.
About 50 participants drawn from EPHI, CDC-Atlanta, Ministry of Agriculture, Addis Ababa Health Centers and hospitals of Ministry of Health, Traditional healers and staff of Federal Police Commission have attended the event.
Currently, EPHI is the sole institute in providing rabies laboratory diagnosis in animals, PEP counseling in humans and anti-rabies vaccine production. This year alone over 30,000 doses of treatment of human vaccine have been produced and distributed through out the country.