Stray dogs bite attacks increases in Sindh

Widespread dog bites in Sindh are increasing day by day.

According to a report issued by Jinnah Hospital, the increase in patients suffering from rabies has a huge percent from all over Sindh.

In the last nine months, seven thousand and 741 people were bitten by dogs in Sindh. But the province doesn’t have enough anti-rabies vaccines (ARV).

Indian ARV makers have stopped supplying to Pakistan citing an increased domestic demand, according to pharmaceutical importer.

“The Indian federal health ministry instructed on April 1 all of their pharmaceutical companies that they can only export 30% of the vaccines,” said the importer.

As many as 13 people, including men, women and mostly children, have lost their lives in Sindh due to rabies encephalitis, a deadly infectious diseases caused by a rabid dogs, this year, while as many as 135,000 people, majority of whom were women and children, have been attacked and bitten by stray dogs in Sindh, including Karachi.

A few days back, a ten-year-old, who was bitten by a stray dog, died of rabies in Larkana.

According to the details, the ten-year-old, who was identified as Mir Hasan was first taken to a hospital in Shikarpur, however, he was not given the treatment because there was no vaccine available at the hospital.

Hasan’s parents said, they later rushed him to Larkana’s Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Hospital, but, it had also run out of the required vaccine, resulting in the boy’s succumbing to the disease.

The Sindh government came under pressure after a video clip of the tragic death of the child, Mir Hasan Abro, went viral on the social media and both print and electronic media bitterly criticized the failure of the provincial government to control the population of stray dogs and arrange anti- rabies vaccine (ARV) for those who are bitten by stray dogs.

A Rabies Encephalitis is a dog-borne viral illness caused mostly by the biting of stray dogs, and if ARV is not administered to the affected person along with immunoglobulin, the patient suffers a miserable death due to hydrophobia and other complications of the disease.