DogExpress
Dog bite cases are on a rise in Delhi. As per a data, in last two years, 19 people lost their lives due to animal bites. Apart from this, around 3,000 dog bite cases were reported till April 2018. However, the hospitals under North civic bodies aren’t prepared for handling dog bite cases as no anti-rabies vaccines are available since last two months.
Issuing a statement, Veena Varmani, the leader of the North Corporation’s standing committee said,
“The contract with the company through which it (the vaccine) was purchased was over, and there was delay in finalising a new contract.”
What NDMC reports say?
Providing details on the dog bites, NDMC in its response said, “In 2015-16, there were 14 deaths and in 2016-17, at least five people had died.” Last year, over 11,000 dog-bite cases were reported by various hospitals and dispensaries in north Delhi. However, they claimed that anti-rabies vaccine was out of stock.
According to the data shared in NDMC meeting that took place on 27 June 2018, the number of dogs caught in the last four years have increased quite a bit.
The figures are —
6,746 in 2014-15
6,489 in 2015-16
9,866 in 2016-17
21,035 in 2017-18
To tackle this problem, the North Corporation owns, Maharishi Valmiki Infectious Diseases (MVID), which is specialized in animal bites and related diseases.
There are four other hospitals in North Delhi which treat these patients-
- Bara Hindu Rao
- Kasturba Gandhi
- Giridhari Lal and Rajan Babu Institute of Pulmonary Medicine
- Tuberculosis-
The World Health Organization had recently asked India and other South East Asian countries to accelerate efforts to end rabies, a disease which claims 26,000 lives in eight out of the 11 nations in the region every year.
According to the WHO
Rabies causes 59,000 agonizing and painful deaths globally every year, translating to one person every nine minutes, mostly children and the poor.
“Eight of the 11 member countries of WHO South-East Asia Region account for nearly 26,000 rabies deaths, 45 percent of the global rabies toll, as over 1.5 million people in the region remain at risk of rabies,” it had said.
Reference: Financial Express
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in Chandigarh, India. 
