World Rabies Day 2026: Stronger Together

World Rabies Day is marked every year on the anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and microbiologist, who developed the rabies vaccine. This year’s World Rabies Day theme, “Stronger Together”, highlights the fact that rabies can only be eradicated in close cooperation of local communities, veterinary professionals, healthcare workers, governments and other partners.

Rabies belongs to the oldest known zoonoses that is transmitted through infected saliva, animal bite, scratches of infected animals, lesions in the skin, and mucosae. Rabies is spread around the world, in particular in Africa and Asia, killing nearly 59,000 people every year. Most lethal cases are due to dog-mediated rabies.

Slovenia had successfully eradicated rabies and holds the rabies-free country status. Urban rabies was eradicated soon after World War II by mandatory vaccination of dogs and implementation of other eradication measures; the last human rabies case was detected in 1950.

Sylvatic rabies with the main rabies-infection reservoir in the red fox was eradicated after introduction of oral anti-rabies vaccination of foxes by aerial distribution of baits. The last sylvatic rabies case in Slovenia was detected in January 2013 in a fox. Though rabies has mostly been eradicated throughout Europe, the anti-rabies vaccination of dogs remains a most important preventive veterinary measure.

World Rabies Day is thus an opportunity for everyone to contribute to a common goal – global rabies eradication, by observing the mandatory measures and by other activities promoting the awareness of the disease and responsible animal ownership.