Hope for the Human Race
Now that I have your attention, I would like to explain the context behind the headline: The Zero By 2030 initiative for eliminating human deaths from rabies; and resulting pleasure of working collaboratively across private and public organizations towards a common goal.
Last week I attended the United Against Rabies consortium annual meeting, which includes WOAH, WHO, FAO, and UNEP, along with industry, and representatives from around the world – in particular from the most affected countries in Africa and Asia. This group has the stated mission to eliminate deaths from rabies in humans, which predominately comes from infected dogs. WOAH leads the effort behind Dr. Rachel Tidman, who works tirelessly across the world and organizations to move the group towards achieving this worthy objective.
At this year’s summit, which was hosted at the FAO headquarters in Rome, the group welcomed GAVI, which is the preeminent global vaccine alliance for humans into the effort. This means the Human Rabies vaccines will be included on their list of subsidized vaccines, which will create a real ‘One Health’ approach to solving the issue.
The energy of the group is incredible, which was augmented by the FAO HQ environment. We intermingled at lunch with the local FAO staff, and I was summarily impressed by everyone I talked to. The FAO is dedicated to sustainability and defeating hunger and the people there are fully committed to the objective. It was fun to be amongst them, if only for a short while.
Between the Zero by 2030 group, and FAO staff, I still believe there is hope for mankind!
Paul Casady
English (United States) 
Portuguese