April 2025: GARC Data Platform Featured User
The GARC Data Platform featured user for April 2025 is another recognized Rabies Center of Excellence (RCE) – The BIG FIX Uganda. The BIG FIX Uganda’s mission is to improve the health and welfare of people and animals and to promote human-animal bond. They have made significant strides toward combating rabies by providing sterilization campaigns, free rabies vaccinations, and deworming to dogs in the Northern region of Uganda. As this month’s featured GARC Data Platform user, The BIG FIX Uganda highlights how the Platform has helped them to keep track of the animals that they have vaccinated since 2022, as well as how keeping track of vaccinated animals helped them to plan more strategically for future events.
Below are some interesting figures relating to The BIG FIX Uganda’s use of the Platform over the course of the last 12 months.
Dog vaccinations tracked: 7,886
Cat vaccinations tracked: 761
Districts where the organization works: 6
Total animal vaccinations tracked since 2022: 23,221
We asked Sarah Schmidt, the President of the Executive Committee for The BIG FIX Uganda, some questions about their use of the Platform.
1. Briefly explain what rabies-related work you do?
We provide free rabies vaccinations, deworming and spay/neuter in 60-100 villages per year. We also have an education program on rabies prevention that reaches 20-40 schools per year, produce an hour long weekly radio talk show, provide emergency rabies outbreak responses, and run a human PEP project to provide assistance for victims of dog bites in suspected rabid dog cases.
2. What benefits have the GARC Data Tools provided you?
The maps help us to visualize holes in vaccination coverage, particularly in times when we have a rabies outbreak. As our resources are limited, we need to use them as effectively as possible and the tracking maps help us so much in this effort.
* The BIG FIX Uganda uses both the Rabies Vaccination Tracker (RVT) and Rabies Case Surveillance (RCS) tools as part of their programmatic activities. The RCS tools enable them to track the location of all animal rabies cases in the communities that they serve, and the RVT tool allows them to track and monitor their animal vaccination activities.
GARC wishes to thank The BIG FIX Uganda for their ongoing use of the GARC Data Platform.
If you are working towards rabies elimination and you are not part of our growing network of Platform users, why wait any longer? You can benefit from improved data collection and visualization – while also engaging with potential donors in a more meaningful way – within a few weeks.
Alternatively, if you are already an active user of the Platform, you could be featured too! Reach out to us by sending us an email to find out how.
