Three weeks into its mass anti-rabies vaccination drive, the Greater Chennai Corporation has administered shots to over 60,000 stray dogs across the city. The target is two lakh dogs in 75 working days, which would make it the most ambitious such programme the GCC has run to date.
The drive kicked off on August 11, starting in Zones 1, 2, and 4 before expanding citywide. Thirty teams have been deployed, each working through the city zone by zone, catching dogs, vaccinating them, deworming them, marking them with coloured paint for identification, and releasing them back at the exact spots where they were picked up. The plan is to cover roughly 3,000 dogs every day until the target is hit.
Why the Target Is Higher This Year
Last year, the GCC vaccinated 1,47,545 stray dogs, a number that was considered a solid outcome at the time. But Chennai’s stray dog population was estimated at around 1.80 lakh then, and officials believe it has grown since. Setting this year’s target at two lakh is an attempt to get ahead of that growth rather than just keep pace with it.
The drive also includes free anti-rabies and anti-parasite vaccinations for pet dogs and cats, a first-time addition that the GCC has used to pull pet owners into the programme rather than treating it as a stray-only exercise. The corporation has appealed to residents, animal feeders, and welfare activists to cooperate with veterinary teams on the ground.
ABC Infrastructure Running Alongside
The vaccination drive is not happening in isolation. The GCC has been simultaneously expanding its Animal Birth Control infrastructure. Of its 15 ABC centres across the city, 11 are currently operational. Two more at Nandambakkam and Perungudi have been cleared to begin functioning, and the remaining two at Athipattu in Ambattur and Sholinganallur are expected to come online by the end of August.
Once all 15 centres are fully functional, the GCC expects daily ABC surgery capacity to roughly double, from around 200 procedures per day to approximately 400. Since January this year, 24,000 birth control surgeries have already been performed on stray dogs in the city, with July recording the highest single-month figure so far at 5,324.
The Cold Chain Question
Not everything about the drive has gone without pushback. Animal welfare activists raised concerns early on about how dogs are being handled during capture operations and, more specifically, about whether the cold chain conditions required to keep vaccines potent are being properly maintained in the field. A vaccine stored or transported incorrectly is effectively useless, and the scale of this operation makes that a legitimate operational risk.
The GCC has rejected the allegations of improper handling, stating that all vaccination vials are stored and transported with the required safeguards. The issue has not been formally escalated but remains a watch point as the drive continues.
What 2 Lakh Looks Like in Practice
Reaching two lakh vaccinations in 75 working days requires consistency, not just ambition. At 3,000 dogs per day with 30 teams on the ground, the math works on paper. But field operations deal with things that paper doesn’t, dogs that are difficult to catch, areas with dense populations that take longer to cover, and logistical gaps that emerge when a programme is operating at this scale.
The 60,000 figure after the first few weeks suggests the drive is running close to target. Whether that pace holds through all zones, including the harder-to-reach parts of the city, will determine whether Chennai gets to its “Rabies-Free” goal on schedule.
September 4, 2026
