One Year of Collars Not Cruelty in the Fight against Rabies

Sep 27, 2012

WSPA’s Collars Not Cruelty campaign has been running for a year today, working to protect millions of dogs from needless deaths and prove that humane dog vaccination is the only effective way to stop rabies.    

Vaccination works where mass killing fails

The world desperately needs more effective action against rabies. The disease kills approximately 55,000 people every year, many of them children. But responding with cruel mass dog killings - during which animals are poisoned, beaten and gassed - does not stop the spread of the disease.

WSPA’s Collars Not Cruelty campaign promotes a more humane and effective response. We encourage and assist governments to carry out mass dog vaccinations, which have proven to work. Vaccinating just 70% of a local dog population against rabies creates a barrier of immunity that protects both animals and people.

We’re not alone. Every leading organization committed to preventing rabies – including the World Health Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – agrees that killing dogs doesn’t stop rabies spreading to people.

Collars Not Cruelty campaign gains pace

This World Rabies Day, WSPA is:

• Celebrating the success of Collars Not Cruelty projects in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and Bali, Indonesia, both of which offer more proof that a mass dog vaccination combined with community education leads to a dramatic decrease in both dog and human rabies-related deaths. Every vaccinated dog is given a red collar to show they have been protected against rabies.
• Delighted to announce a partnership with the government of Bangladesh: together, we will roll out a Rabies National Action Plan that will help stamp out rabies in all of Bangladesh, where it kills more than 2,000 people a year.
• Looking forward to the results of new research that will identify how we can best work with governments and communities in rabies-prevalent African countries to introduce humane vaccination. We plan to start running pilot schemes in Africa in early 2013.

Help us help dogs

“We are pleased to see the successes to date, where mass dog vaccination programs have been introduced, but our vision is to have a world where no dog is needlessly killed in response to rabies. We want to see all countries with rabies running mass vaccination programmes until this deadly disease is stamped out,” says WSPA CEO Mike Baker.

Read more from Mike Baker about ending rabies on his Huffington Post byline.

Help us protect dogs from terrible deaths. Please join hundreds of thousands of WSPA supporters and celebrity dog-lovers including Ricky Gervais by supporting the Collars Not Cruelty campaign.