World Rabies Day marked in China

Activities were held across Chinese cities on Sunday to promote knowledge about rabies on the eighth World Rabies Day.

On Sunday, The Ta Foundation, a Beijing NGO which deals with stray pets, initiated a publicity campaign in the capital. The "Grey Ribbon" campaign calls on people to actively participate in prevention and control of rabies by taking care of their pets properly and vaccinating them. The government aims to eradicate the disease by 2025.

Other activities were also held in Sichuan, Shandong, Hunan and, in the northern municipality of Tianjin, the local center for disease control and prevention held a seminar asking people to spread the word about prevention.

Dogs have become popular pets in China recently, and cases of rabies have also been reported. From January to August this year, more than 100,000 people in Beijing received rabies vaccine due to bites or scratches by dogs or cats, with three deaths reported, according to Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning.

Earlier this month, the government of Baoshan City of southwest Yunnan Province culled almost 5,000 dogs and vaccinated 100,000 in an anti-rabies campaign, after five fatal infections of humans in July and August.

Rabies is a class 2 notifiable disease in China with cases rare in the past five years. In 2006, at least 16 people died of rabies in east China's Shandong Province after a rash of dog attacks.