WORLD RABIES DAY: Educating the future of this country

TNR Trust Karura Education Children Event

Going with the theme for this year’s World Rabies Day that is “Share the Message, Save a Life.” on 21^st September, 2018, TNR Trust in collaboration with Friends of Karura held a half day Kids Event at Karura Forest. The intention of the event was to sensitize school children of the age of 6 years to 14 years old children on the subject rabies. It should be noted 2,000 Kenyans die every year because of rabies

For the event to be more relevant and factual, we invited Fifth Year Veterinary students from the University of Nairobi who took through the children on that particular subject. And a lot of questions came out for the speaker to answer during Q&A time.

It will be important to note some of the interesting questions the students had concerning rabies. The questions included:

1. Can an infected dog that is pregnant, give birth to puppies that are infected with rabies?
2. Where did this disease come from?
3. If a dog has rabies, can it be treated and get healed?
4. If a dog has rabies, can I kill?
5. What causes rabies?
6. How do we vaccinate dogs?
7. If cats are also infected with

These and many other questions were asked by the students during the talk and our able tutor of the day Rashid Ocholla did a great job in using very simple language to make the students understand what is rabies, symptoms if bitten and how to prevent rabies infection and spread.

Being a children event, we had stuffed toys of dogs, stethoscopes and Dr’s coat, empty syringes and a digital weighing scale, where they imitated being Vet Doctors, with the help of the vet students, they were shown how to vaccinate a dog and where exactly. It was real fun for the students.

With the sponsorship from Swedish Society, we had prepared colouring booklets with drawings showing how to take care and treat our dogs and crayons for the students, which we gave them to colour and take home.

Being an education event, Swahili Rabies posters were given to all the students and their teachers to take home to their parents and neighbours. The teachers and the students were very happy for learning much about rabies and how it can be prevented.