In ‘The Truth Bites’ (IE, March 21), Abi T Vanak makes a variety of declarations which necessitate contestation. He composes, “Worse still, dogs are responsible for over 20,000 rabies deaths.” One presumes that he indicates 20,000 human deaths from rabies every year.
Since 2005, the Union federal government’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI) has actually been each year releasing a National Health Profile for the nation. According to the 2021 edition, there were 105 cases of human death from rabies in India in 2019. The 2018 edition put the figure at 97 in 2017. According to the pertinent preceding yearly National Health Profiles, there were 86 human deaths from rabies in 2016, 113 in 2015, 125 in 2014 and 132 in 2013.
Vanak composes, “The only long-term solution is to implement strict pet ownership rules, prohibit people from carelessly feeding dogs everywhere, and set up facilities funded by animal welfare organisations that can either house dogs for life or, or humanely euthanise them so that they don’t suffer on the streets.”
Confining roaming dogs in centers and/or eliminating them (gentle euthanasia is a euphemism) is subversive of the application of the ABC program under which street dogs are gotten from a location, sterilised and immunized versus rabies, and went back to the exact same location. Being territorial, they keep unsterilised and unvaccinated dogs out and the authorities can focus on sterilising and immunizing in brand-new locations up until all roaming dogs in a city or district are covered. Killing all dogs in a location would make it possible for unsterilised, unvaccinated dogs to come in and the authorities will need to return once again and once again to the exact same location to eliminate the brand-new arrivals. Until the promulgation of the ABC Rules, the variety of roaming dogs continued to increase in India in spite of unrelenting mass killings.
Vanak composes, “Even if they are sterilised, dogs that continue to live on streets will bite, chase people and vehicles, get into accidents, suffer from hunger and disease and remain in conflict with people.”
The ABC program serves to minimize cases of dog bites. Since sterilised bitches do not enter into heat, battles amongst dogs over bitches, which raise their aggressiveness levels, do not take place throughout the breeding season. This considerably lowers the variety of circumstances in which a greater level of aggressiveness results in a higher intolerance of justification and biting of individuals. Also, given that sterilised bitches do not have litters, one does not witness the increase in aggressiveness levels that takes place when they are securing their puppies versus risks — which are lots of, offered how people treat animals. Significantly, lots of get bitten while teasing, striking, or attempting to remove puppies.
Also, “humane” euthanasia does not help. In its Eighth Report, (WHO Technical Report Series 824), the WHO’s Expert Committee on Rabies, had actually specified in 1991: “There is no evidence that the removal of dogs has ever had a significant impact on dog population densities and the spread of rabies. The population turnover of dogs may be so high that even the highest recorded removal rates (about 15 per cent of the dog population) are easily compensated by survival rates.”
K Bogel, Chief Veterinary, Public Health, Division of Communicable illness, World Health Organization (WHO), and John Hoyt, then President, World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), in addition to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), specified in their joint beginning to the Guidelines for Dog Population Management launched by the WHO and WSPA in May 1990: “All too often, authorities confronted by problems caused by these [stray] dogs have turned to mass destruction in the hope of finding a quick solution, only to find that the destruction had to continue, year after year, with no end in sight.”
Vanak composes, “To expect a developing country like India to invest thousands of crores of rupees to set up necessary infrastructure and deploy lakhs of people to catch dogs, operate on them and take care of them is a pipe dream. Especially considering that many regions of this country do not have adequate infrastructure for public health.”
Lakhs of individuals will likewise need to be used to go on capturing roaming dogs for eliminating or confinement, and veterinary cosmetic surgeons to carry out the executions. Housing and feeding roaming dogs completely in “facilities” will need a constant circulation of funds. A substantial quantity of money will be needed for purchasing injection syringes and deadly drugs for killing, and the safe disposal of bodies. And, naturally, brand-new facilities needs to be developed in lots of locations for all this.
Human-roaming dog relations deal with lots of problems. These need to be fixed humanely and efficiently.
The author is a senior reporter
