Rabies is a virus that travels up the nervous system to the
brain of the host, before eventually killing them. It’s estimated 59,000 people a year die of rabies, the majority under 15 years old. That means someone dies of rabies every 9 minutes.

In 9 minutes you could boil the kettle, make a cup of tea,
turn on the TV, move to the sofa, flick through the channels, decide what to watch and start drinking your tea – in those 9 minutes, someone dies from something 100% preventable.

99% of all human cases of rabies are transmitted through dog
bites, once symptoms develop it’s 100% fatal. Rabies is a 100% vaccination preventable disease. 

I am incredibly passionate about preventing disease, and
there are so many different vaccines and drugs now that we can use to prevent diseases that ultimately kill. It takes less than 30 seconds to give a rabies vaccination to a dog, in 9 minutes I could vaccinate 18 dogs. Think about how many lives that will save.

That’s why in November I’ll be travelling to Cambodia with
Mission Rabies. Mission Rabies was launched in 2013 and since then they have vaccinated over 1,300,000 dogs and reached over 3,400,000 children. I knew when I applied to go on this trip, this is meant to be their biggest challenge yet, vaccinating the entire province of Phnom Penh in just 10 days. That’s a target of 100,000 dogs.

Before we travel, we are asked to fundraise an aim of £350,
now I want to double this and raise £700. 

It costs £5 to educate 25 children on how to protect themselves against rabies.

 £15 vaccinates 10 dogs against rabies for a whole year.

 £50 enables Mission Rabies to purchase dog catching nets to
capture street dogs safely and humanly for vaccination.