Editor,
A mother placed her seven-month-old son on the ground to do her duty. Being a poor daily-wage worker, she could not afford to skip her work as there was no paid holiday for her to rear her infant child.
No sooner had she placed the child on the ground than a pack of dogs came from nowhere, bit the child and dragged him away. People in the vicinity raised an alarm but by then the dogs had disfigured the baby and killed him on the spot.
This incident happened in the Ayodhya Nagar area of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, on 10 January this year. A video of the gory incident was widely circulated on social media.
All stray dogs must immediately be sterilised and kept in an enclosed area to minimise colossal loss of human lives. India has around 20,000 rabies deaths a year, which, according to the World Health Organisation, “accounts for 36 percent of the world’s deaths.” Most of the victims of rabies in India are under the age of 15 years.
Rabies is a serious brain infection that spreads from the bite or scratch of an infected animal, often a dog. The disease has been eliminated from many countries. It is a challenging job in a country like India, where dogs are allowed to roam freely. Rabies is a fatal disease. But it can be prevented by vaccinating all dogs for a number of years and by sterilising stray dog population.
When India is nowhere near the target, Bhutan has completely sterilised and vaccinated its entire stray dog population after pursuing a 14-year dog population control programme. An all-out drive to vaccinate dogs across the country like the way Indians have been vaccinated against Covid-19 must immediately be pursued to save precious human lives.
The WHO has recommended oral rabies vaccines (ORV) which can be hidden in dog food, in addition with injectable vaccines to increase vaccination, especially among free-roaming and poorly supervised dogs. According to experts, the combination of an injectable and oral vaccine approach would help reach the minimum 70 percent vaccine threshold needed to minimise the risk of rabies being passed to people.
Apart from umpteen numbers of cases of stray dogs attacking people, sometimes a pet dog attacks a gig worker, or a passerby, or even its owner, especially when it belongs to a dangerous breed.
No kudos is enough for the Legal Attorneys & Barrister Law Firm for filing a petition before the Delhi High Court, alleging that “dangerous dog breeds” like American Bulldog, Rottweiler, Pitbull, Terrier, Neapolitan Mastiff, that are banned in more than 12 countries, including India, are being registered to be kept as pets by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. The petition highlighted many incidents in which such dog breeds attacked people, including their owners.
On 6 December last year, the Delhi High Court delivered a judgment, asking the Centre to immediately decide, preferably within three months, about banning and cancelling the licence to keep dangerous dog breeds as pets.
Most of the victims of dog bites and rabies belong to the poor working class of our society who build our roads, bridges and houses for all of us, and who serve everything at our doors, starting from morning newspapers to food packets. It is really perplexing that their deaths evoke little public sympathy and a lukewarm response from the authorities. I love dogs as much as I hate such insensitive attitude towards poor workers.
The government must undertake a programme to vaccinate and sterilise all stray dogs and keep them in an enclosed area. Licences issued to keep dangerous dog breeds as pets must immediately be cancelled. Authorities should also ensure that no such licence is issued in future.
Sujit De,
Kolkata