We, as a country, need to progress, instead of regressing 50 years
KARACHI: I recently viewed a disturbing video posted on Twitter showing around 1,000 dogs that were poisoned and disposed of by municipal authorities in Saddar Town, Karachi, somewhere near Pakistan Chowk. The dogs’ carcasses were being disposed of using dump trucks, the way waste and litter around the city is dumped — which, I would like to add, is not being taken care of at all, even though it is the need of the hour. My first question to the people responsible is, who authorised this barbaric act? My second question is, could they think of no other way than to poison innocent animals and then dispose them of in the most savage and despicable way possible, having no regard for their lives? My third question, did you even think for a minute that their removal in this way would lead to the spread of more disease, not to mention smell, mosquitoes and flies, which our city is already infested with?
There is a simple, logical and humane solution to such problems, and if you can’t think of any, please do some research. Forget about the West — even countries like India, Nepal and Thailand have animal birth control and vaccination programmes. They catch stray dogs from the streets, about 20 to 30 a day, sterilise them and even vaccinate them against rabies. They clip their ears so that people know they have undergone treatment. In Turkey, stray dogs and cats roam around freely and are even seen around restaurants and cafes. The strategy is to trap, spay or neuter, vaccinate and treat, and release them.
A sustained animal birth control programme combined with widespread rabies immunisation is the only method of reducing rabies that has been effective. Just to quote one example, since 1998, the street dog population in Kalimpong, India, has been reduced by almost 80 per cent and the number of human deaths from rabies has fallen from over 25 each year to zero. Culling dogs is not allowed in India. Read that part again. If they can do it, we can do it. I implore the authorities to stop this inhumane and cruel killing of stray dogs immediately, and adopt a simple and logical process of sterilising them to control their populations. We, as a country, need to progress, instead of regressing 50 years.
Maheen Ghauri
Published in The Express Tribune, August 8th, 2016.
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