Today, September 8, is World Rabies Day.

DID YOU KNOW…?Approximately 55,000 people die worldwide from rabies each year!

Despite being 100% preventable, rabies kills approximately one person every ten minutes.

The World Rabies Day initiative is a global rabies awareness campaign being spearheaded by the UK charity Alliance for Rabies Control and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In the U.S., raccoons are the most common animals found to be rabid, followed by skunks and bats. However, the type of terrestrial mammals that carry rabies varies across geographic areas of the U.S.

Horses can have rabies. A high-profile case happened in 2006, when a horse at the Walking Horse Celebration in Tennessee tested positive for rabies. The Centers for Disease Control made a nationwide appeal to the 150,000 spectators at the show who might have come into contact with the infected horse.

To learn more about the impact of rabies on people and animals around the world, visit worldrabiesday.org.