Event Summary

Rare Disease Day 2016 was bigger and better than ever before!

There were events held around the world, across 85 countries and regions (all 28 EU countries!) with first time participants: Andorra, Aruba, Indonesia, Libya, Mauritius, Moldova, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe! Hundreds of events organised by patient groups were displayed on our website!

• Policy makers were active in Europe, Australia, Canada, Ireland and 37 statehouse events in the US and more!
• Hundreds of organisations showed their solidarity by becoming a Friend!
• Researchers, medical professionals, carers, healthcare employees and institutions joined in to make the voice of rare diseases heard!

Media Coverage

Great media coverage all over the world: Rare Disease Day was prevalant in print, radio, television and online!

Social Media Highlight

• The Rare Disease Day video was published in 34 languages with over 300,000 views! This was disseminated worldwide via sharing on social media, particularly Facebook.
• A new look for our website was launched, which was more dynamic and engaging than ever, with180,000 visits to rarediseaseday.org!
• The number of testimonies more than doubled on the website and there were 36,000 tweets with #rarediseaseday on February 29. The hashtag trended in the UK and US. The Thunderclap campaign reached nearly 1.5 million people on social media!
• We reached over 6 million people on Facebook alone and likes on our page are now well over 77,000!