Award recognises impact of rabies work
The University of Edinburgh has honoured Professor Richard Mellanby with the Chancellor’s Award for Impact.
Professor Richard Mellanby was recognised for the impact of his work in developing strategies for rabies elimination in dogs in the developing world and the resulting dramatic decline in human rabies deaths.
Richard holds the Personal Chair of Comparative Medicine at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and the Roslin Institute.
Chancellor Awards
Professor Richard Mellanby, along with Alan Convery, Jenny Culbertson, and Charles ffrench-Constant, was congratulated by the Chancellor, at a gala dinner held at the Palace of Holyrood House.
Established in 2003, the Chancellor’s Awards reward staff in four categories for teaching, research, impact and showing great potential in early career research.
This is a tremendous achievement and recognition of Richard’s outstanding work and leadership in Rabies Control in Low and Middle-Income Countries. Working with the Mission Rabies charity, Richard has overseen a mass canine rabies vaccination, education and surveillance programme which has resulted in the vaccination of over one million dogs and in the education of over two million children.
This work has resulted in the decline of human rabies deaths in Goa from 15 in 2014 to zero deaths in 2018. Similarly, their work has resulted in the dramatic decline in rabies deaths in Blantyre where they have vaccinated over 200,000 dogs in the past 4 years.
** The Roslin Institute receives strategic investment funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and it is part of the University of Edinburgh’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. **
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