Our mission
Zero rabies deaths by 2030, without killing a single dog.
Both halves of that sentence are the mission. Ending rabies transmission across our twelve wards is the goal; reaching it by vaccination and sterilisation rather than culling is the condition we accept it under. Everything below is what those two things commit us to.
Targets to 2030
- 202770% vaccination coverage in all twelve wards, not just the four core ones
- 2028Every ward register digitised and shared with the district veterinary office
- 202980 villages on the annual round, all reached within the same twelve months
- 2030No human rabies death anywhere in the programme area
- Every yearNot one dog culled in any ward we work in
Progress against each of these is published in the annual report, in the same table, whether it moved or not.
How we think this works
Vaccinate seven in ten dogs in a defined place, every year, and the virus runs out of animals to move between.
This is not our theory. It is the arithmetic behind every successful dog-mediated rabies elimination programme of the last forty years, from Latin America to Sri Lanka, and it has been demonstrated in Tanzania itself. What is difficult is not knowing it. What is difficult is reaching that threshold in the same villages, in consecutive years, for long enough to matter.
So the chain below is deliberately boring. There is no innovation in it. The only thing we are claiming to be good at is turning up in the same place at the same time of year with the vaccine still cold, and writing down what happened.
What we put in
- Rabies vaccine, bought in bulk once a year
- One vehicle and a field surgery kit
- Eleven staff, nine of them clinical
- 22 ward wardens on a stipend
- A register for every ward we enter
What we do with it
- Vaccinate at a fixed point, then door to door
- Sterilise 18–24 dogs a clinic day
- Treat wounds, mange and disease in the compound
- Teach bite first aid in primary schools
- Record every animal, the same night
What that produces
- Coverage above 70%, held year on year
- A dog population that stops growing
- Bites washed properly in the first ten minutes
- A register the district office can actually use
What changes because of it
- Rabies runs out of unvaccinated dogs to move between
- Fewer bites, and fewer that go untreated
- Households keep the dogs they already feed
- Ward offices plan the round themselves
What it adds up to
- No child in these wards dies of a disease we know how to stop
- No district reaches for a cull to feel like it acted
Each stage depends entirely on the one to its left. Miss a year in a ward and the chain does not slow down — it resets, because an unvaccinated generation of dogs replaces the one you reached.
What we will not do
Six commitments. They cost us money, coverage and at least one funder, and they are not negotiable.
- We do not cullAnd we will not run a programme in a district that is planning one, whatever it would do for our coverage figures.
- We do not take dogs from people who want themA dog removed from the household feeding it is a dog with nobody.
- We do not build a shelterKennels absorb money that vaccinates hundreds. Twenty-six is the ceiling, and it is deliberate.
- We do not export dogs as a programmeA handful travel each year with adopters who came to Arusha first. That is all.
- We do not photograph distress without askingNot a frightened dog, not the inside of anyone's home, not a child. We ask first and we accept no.
- We do not publish a figure we cannot show the register forIf we say 74%, the paperwork behind it goes to the ward office and to anyone who asks.
How you would know we had failed
| Measure | What would count as failure |
|---|---|
| Coverage | Falls below 70% in a core ward two years running |
| A death | Any human rabies death in the programme area traced to a ward we had signed off |
| The kennels | More than 30 dogs resident — it would mean we are removing dogs instead of treating them where they live |
| Overheads | Administration, audit and fundraising above 8% of spending |
| Silence | A year in which we stop publishing the ward-by-ward table |
Most organisations publish what went right and let you infer the rest. These are the five things that would mean this programme is not working, written down in advance so that neither we nor you get to move the goalposts later. The year-by-year table already shows one of them happening once, in 2020.
Who decides
Clinical protocols are set by the veterinary director and are not subject to a vote. Which wards we enter, in what order, is agreed jointly with the ward executive officers and the district veterinary office — we have no authority to work anywhere we have not been invited, and we have withdrawn from one district that wanted a cull alongside the round.
Spending is approved against an annual budget, audited by a firm in Arusha, and filed with the Registrar of NGOs. Where the money actually went last year is published here.