Between 24^th November and 3^rd December, I will be taking on a huge challenge: The Saxons, Vikings and Normans ‘Saxon Shore Seaside Series’, with the goal of running 10 marathons in 10 days, whilst
also raising money for Mission Rabies.  

Mission Rabies is a UK-based charity and international NGO working to eliminate rabies by 2030. Despite being 100% vaccine preventable, rabies, the world’s deadliest zoonotic disease, results in the death of a child at least every nine minutes – and it is estimated that a dog is killed through fear of this disease approximately every thirty seconds. Rabies causes at least 70,000 human deaths annually, mostly children, and mostly in developing countries.

Following World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, Mission Rabies runs mass dog vaccination programmes in India, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. As 99% of all human rabies cases come from dogs, and we know that if at least 70% of dogs in an area are vaccinated, the disease will die out there, this method is the most effective way of preventing and eliminating rabies. Alongside their vaccination work, they run lifesaving education programmes and conduct relevant original scientific research. For more information visit www.missionrabies.com.

I am supporting Mission Rabies because their work has shown that it IS possible to control dog-mediated rabies. For example, in the last two years the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, has gone from having the highest incidence record of child rabies from a single institution in Africa, to only having 1 recorded child rabies death in 2016. In Ranchi there were no human rabies deaths in 2016, and only one reported in Goa for the same year.  Mission Rabies is making a real difference, but can't do it without funding. Please give as much as you can to help eliminate rabies.