Short on funding : Vaccines go to the dogs in Larkana

Hospitals refuse dog bite victims treatment due to vaccine shortage.

RATODERO: It is traumatic enough to go through a dog bite but what is worse for the victim is a hospital’s refusal to treat because it doesn’t have the vaccine. This is the case at Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), Larkana which has not been allocated a separate budget for the problem.

One Verorab (anti-rabies vaccine) injection for dog bite patients costs Rs750 and five vaccines are required to treat one case. The budget allocated to the health EDO and People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative (PPHI) by the Sindh government is also insufficient.

Larkana PPHI’s Mustafa Kamal Tagar wrote a letter to the CMCH medical superintendent (MS) on January 14, asking him to provide Verorab injections to the dog bite victims who come to CMCH. He also enclosed 14 outpatient department (OPD) slips for patients who were denied treatment at CMCH because they live outside the limits of Larkana municipality.

The MS denies treatment to such patients or refers them to PPHI or the health EDO, where these vaccines have not been available recently, said PPHI sources.

“It is difficult because 47 health facilities in Larkana have to run on a limited budget and no funds are allocated to purchase anti-rabies vaccines,” wrote Tagar.

Copies of the letter were also sent to different officials, including the health department secretary and health services director general for Sindh and Hyderabad.

The MS responded that the CMCH is in the same boat as other facilities and they cannot afford enough of these injections either.

Dog bite victims claimed that the health EDO has displayed banners outside his office in Larkana which read: ‘Injections for dog bite cases are not available so do not bother’.

The National Institute of Health Laboratories, Islamabad is the only organisation that provides these injections to the government sector at subsidised rates. With the increasing number of dog bite and snake bite patients, which both require the same treatment, health facilities are unable to cope with the situation and patients who cannot afford the vaccine continue to suffer.

According to the World Health Organisation, dogs are behind 99 per cent of deaths in humans by rabies. People in Pakistan, where mangy, stray dogs are loitering on every street corner, are at a high risk of catching rabies, which till now has no proper cure.

Dr Seemin Jamali, a rabies specialist and incharge of the emergency ward at the Jinnah hospital in Karachi, said that it is mostly young children who catch the virus. “It is a lethal disease and a patient can die within 10 days,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th, 2011.