APGAW Seeks Support For Mission Rabies

The work of Mission Rabies was brought to our attention in the summer of 2016 by APGAW member, Clarissa Baldwin and it captured our attention owing to its great potential to improve life for animals and children.

Mission Rabies is a UK based charity set up by vet Luke Gamble to tackle rabies in Malawi which is ranked the world’s poorest country based on a GDP per capita of $226.50. Deaths from rabies went up in 2013 and 2014 and Mission Rabies realised that this deadly disease needed to be eliminated to save both people, mainly children and dogs. The charity initiated an intensive city-wide vaccination campaign which launched in May 2015 vaccinating over 35,000 dogs in 20 working days (70% of the city’s dog population) since then there has been only one human rabies death. They repeated their campaign in 2016 and will do so again in 2017.

Rabies kills a child every 9 minutes around the world. This is why the work of Mission Rabies is vital and must be supported by politicians and other charities and the reason why APGAW wishes to endorse its work. This stops the massive poisoning and other inhumane methods of killing dog populations often used to try and control rabies which is never effective in eliminating the disease.

Dogs Trust funded the first stage of the project in the city of Blantyre proving its success. Now the programme will extend but to get rid of rabies entirely in Malawi it requires $20million USD over 3 years.  The Malawian Government are supporting it and will allow it to go ahead but Mission Rabies now needs to raise that money.

To learn more about Mission Rabies you can read this report. To either support or donate, APGAW would ask you to  please visit: www.missionrabies.com.