KARACHI: The provincial government has sought support from the private sector on two separate levels to tackle growing number of dog-bite cases in the city and plug “potentially fatal gaps” in the public sector healthcare system, it emerged on Friday.

According to sources, the meetings held in the last two days – one chaired by Chief Minister Retired Justice Maqbool Baqar and the other by Health Minister Dr Saad Khalid Niaz a day earlier – reflected government’s concern and its persistent failure to address what has become a lingering mortal threat to citizens, forcing officials to seek assistance from the private sector.

On Friday, sources said, the chief minister at a meeting held at the CM House directed the local government to work together with Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation (ACF) to control dog population and launch a public awareness campaign aimed at preventing cruelty towards animals. He directed the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation to provide six vans to ACF to help catch dogs and neuter them.

He also received a detailed briefing on the rabies control programme – launched over a year ago in the province but is still far behind from making an impact at the community level – by secretary local government Manzoor Shaikh.

The latter informed the meeting that the programme was initiated to avoid human deaths from rabies by reducing the incidence of rabies in dogs, a prime host of the deadly virus, through effective preventive and control measures.

These measures, he pointed out, included establishment of 20 centres in as many districts of the province where vaccination of dogs would be carried out.

“Under the programme, 125,000 dogs in 20 districts would be vaccinated by June 2025. Three vaccination centres are working in East, Central and South districts where 1,072 dogs have been spayed, 5,436 neutered and 8,000 vaccinated,” he said, adding that the department had also set up three anti-rabies centres in districts South, Center and Malir.

The chief minister also gave directives for activating the veterinary hospital located off M.A. Jinnah Road and for ensuring availability of anti-rabies vaccine at hospitals.

A day earlier, the health minister received a detailed briefing on government efforts for rabies’ prevention at his office, which was attended by experts from both the public and private sector.

During the meeting, senior infectious disease expert at The Indus Hospital (TIH) Dr Naseem Salahuddin and director health services highlighted the measures, being taken for the prevention of the deadly infection, that included 14 centres working in collaboration with TIH.

The minister directed officials to set up a registry for collecting data on rabies and setting up counters at all tertiary care public sector hospitals to attend to cases of dog-bite.

Potentially fatal gaps

Commenting on the government efforts, experts who attended these meetings emphasised the need for a coordinated and holistic approach to contain the dog population and eliminate rabies.

The government, they said, must take cue from other countries where successful results were achieved within a short time by implementing the one-health approach which meant that the health of people is closely associated with the health of animals and our shared environment.

“Intervention is needed at multiple levels in a cohesive and coordinated manner. We not only trained personnel for vaccinating and sterilising dog population, we also needed to train healthcare providers on proper management of dog-bite cases, create public awareness on humane treatment to animals, prevention of rabies and providing sufficient supplies of life-saving rabies immunoglobulin and

rabies’ vaccine at hospitals,” the expert said.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2023