Sindh govt decides to vaccinate dogs instead of humans

Karachi: The municipality has finalized the Fight against Rabies and Population Control of Street Dog program, Sindh.

Secretary Municipality Sindh Roshan Ali Sheikh chaired an important meeting in Karachi.

The meeting decided that the vaccination process of 5 million stray dogs would be started from today, while in the first phase of street dog program Sindh, the municipal teams would be trained to catch and vaccinate the dogs, regarding which the training of district central sanitary employees will begin.

In the second phase, the population will be controlled by vasectomy and PC-1 is ready for that purpose.

The meeting in Karachi has also decided to seek the help of various NGOs for vaccination and vasectomy of dogs.

During the meeting, Secretary Municipality Roshan Ali Sheikh said that the shelters of the dogs will be built as over 28,000 stray dogs have been killed across Sindh during the campaign and there will be no need to kill dogs after vaccination and vasectomy of dogs.

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.

More than dozen 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.