15 rabies death in Chennai in last four months

CHENNAI: Every day at least 30 stray dogs are vaccinated for rabies at the dog pound maintained by the Blue Cross volunteers. The volunteers often boast that Chennai is a model rabies -free city. But they do not know that there were 15 rabies deaths in the city in the last four months.
Rabies control in the city hinges on four stakeholders: hospitals that treat patients, Chennai Corporation, NGOs, and the state health authorities.And these agencies have not been communicating with each other. "In no review meetings has the Chennai Corporation mentioned rabies deaths," say NGOs such as Blue Cross who carry out birth control programmes and anti-rabies vaccination for stray dogs. "Could the deaths be due to other animals?" Dawn Williams, resident manager for Blue Cross, asked in disbelief.
Blue Cross, along with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty against Animals and the People for Animals, has taken up the work of identifying, sterilising and vaccinating stray dogs in the Chennai Corporation limits. Though sterilisation is a one-time effort to reduce dog population, vaccinations need to be carried out every year.
For the first round of vaccination, the dogs are sterilised and given anti-rabies shots. After vaccination, the ears of the dogs are notched to identify them for follow up. The animal welfare activists claim that the yearly follow up vaccinations are not difficult to do, since dogs are territorial animals and the NGOs keep a record of the number of dogs in a particular area and vaccinate them.
"Dogs do not relocate and it is easy to find them after a year in the same locality. This way we do not miss any dog," said Blue Cross joint secretary joint secretary Sathya Radhakrishnan. The organisation says that they have been vaccinating since 1964 and the stray dog population has reduced drastically.
But resident welfare associations vehemently disagree. "There seems to be a new pup everyday in our neighbourhood. And we see many new dogs moving in to mate with the bitches," said Federation of T Nagar Residents joint secretary VS Jayaraman.
Residents argue that there is no guarantee that the dogs sterlised are followed up for vaccinations. "They chase you in the night. On several days, we have seen people fall off their bikes or scream on road. No one knows which dog was vaccinated when. I wish they had a collar that would give us the vaccination date," says R Lakshminarayanan, a resident of Natesan Nagar in Virugambakkam.
Animal welfare activists say that collars will help, but with no funding from the civic body, they don't think it's achievable. "The corporation has given us the place. The money they allot per dog is hardly enough for feeding and vaccines. If they share at least 50% of the cost of surgery, we would be able to do much better," Radhakrishan of Blue Cross said.