Dog & Cat Coalition (DACC) Unites Voices Across Asia for World Rabies Day 2026
Every year on September 28, people around the globe celebrate World Rabies Day, which serves as a momentum to unite, advocate, and take action together toward rabies elimination. This year’s theme, “Stronger Together,” highlights the fact that rabies elimination is only possible when sectors across animal and public health systems work together.
In the past few months, the Asia for Animals Coalition (AfA) Dog and Cat Coalition (DACC) invited people working in different sectors across Asia to reflect on the challenges they face in eliminating rabies, the role they or their organizations play to prevent rabies, and what “Stronger Together” means to them.
The Challenges of Eliminating Rabies Across Asia
One challenge that came up consistently among our member organizations in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal is the gap in public awareness of rabies. They highlighted the need to guide communities around rabies prevention and the importance of vaccination and post-exposure treatment. In India, this gap in awareness also extended among healthcare providers and local authorities.
From the government’s perspective, the Department of Agriculture in Bali, Indonesia, highlighted that the challenge lies in the difficulty of catching free-roaming dogs for vaccination and sterilization, along with limited resources allocated to addressing rabies concerns.
Issues like the dog and cat meat trade can also complicate rabies-control efforts in broader parts of Southeast Asia, particularly in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. The trade involves dogs and cats being transported within and across borders, including from areas where rabies is still circulating, potentially introducing the disease into new areas and making surveillance and vaccination efforts more difficult.
These challenges may look different depending on where we are and the role we play, but they also show why rabies cannot be addressed through a single intervention or by a single sector.
How Individuals, Teachers and Communities Can Help Prevent Rabies
One pet owner we spoke to, Astrid, reminded us that individual action can be as simple as keeping our own dogs vaccinated against rabies. For teachers and communities, it can mean helping people understand rabies, prevent dog bites, recognize possible signs of the disease, and know what to do after an exposure.
We saw the value of education ourselves when DACC visited students at BINUS School Simprug in Jakarta, Indonesia. Students learned about rabies, what it looks like, and how to prevent dog bites. Afterwards, they turned what they had learned into educational posters so they can take that knowledge back to their families and communities.
What Stronger Together Means for Rabies Elimination
When we asked what “Stronger Together” meant to them, the messages shared with us came back to a common idea: none of these roles can succeed in isolation.
Dog vaccination: Vaccines need to be accessible, communities need to understand their importance, and governments and partners need the capacity to vaccinate dogs—including free-roaming dogs
Awareness & education: It's important for communities to know how to prevent dog bites, recognize potential rabies risks, and what to do after an exposure.
Human healthcare: Post-exposure treatment needs to be available and accessible
Reporting & surveillance: Suspected cases need to be identified and reported so that appropriate responses can follow.
DACC also has a role to play in supporting these efforts. When rabies is a concern, especially in relation to free-roaming dogs, we advocate for humane responses that address the actual risk of rabies rather than indiscriminate dog killing. Through DACC's Humane Response Guidelines, we provide organizations with practical guidance to respond to free-roaming dog issues more humanely and strategically, while addressing the underlying concerns that can lead to calls for dogs to be removed or killed.
Working Collectively Towards a Rabies-Free Future
As messages from Dr Andre Coetzer, the CEO of Global Alliance for Rabies Control, and Sirjana Nijjar, the Co-CEO of Asia for Animals Coalition also reminded us, ending rabies requires us to share knowledge, strengthen capacity, empower people, and work collectively towards the same goal. No single organization or country can achieve it alone.
Together, their messages show what “Stronger Together” looks like in practice: each of us playing our part towards the same goal: a rabies-free future.
Hear directly from the people who shared their perspectives with us on rabies prevention across Asia through our World Rabies Day series on AfA Events Instagram.
