Bangladesh far away from eliminating rabies with no initiative to control dogs

The government had set out to eliminate rabies by 2020 nearly a decade ago, but there has been no visible effort to control dog population, seen as a basic task to prevent the disease, reports bdnews24.com.
The local government and livestock ministries were supposed to assist the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) to implement the 2011 programme.
But after almost 10 years, the DGHS says it is not their responsibility to control the dog population.
The livestock ministry says it lacks sufficient workforce to run the programme. No effort to implement the project is visible at the local government ministry either.
The scheme focused on controlling the stray dogs as rabies is mainly transmitted to humans through biting or scratching by dogs infected with the virus.
Around 350,000 people in the country are bitten by dogs every year, according to the government data.
The Disease Control Department of DGHS has 67 centres across Bangladesh to provide rabies vaccines to people after dog bite.
At least 251,877 people took the vaccine in 2019 while the number was 126,583 until October 2020.
On an average, 15 people receive treatment a Rabies Control and Elimination Centre every day.
Not all dog bites are reported as many of the injured people do not go to the hospitals while many hospitals or medical centres do not report the incidents, officials said.
People related to the programme blame stray dogs for spreading rabies in the country, but none of the government agencies has data on these animals.
Bangladesh now has around 1.8 million stray dogs, believe the officials of Rabies Control and Elimination Programme.
People were waiting in a long queue for rabies vaccine at the National Infectious Disease Hospital in Dhaka's Mohakhali on Sunday. Most of them came from the capital while the others arrived from nearby districts.
Md Ripon from Narayanganj's Rupganj was bitten by a dog while walking on the road. He said stray dogs were causing people a lot of trouble.
"Earlier people used to beat the dogs to death, but now nobody does that. I've heard that the authorities kill dogs in the cities and also control their birth. But I don't see any such programme in the rural areas," he said.
Dhaka South City Corporation recently moved to relocate the stray dogs from the capital, which ignited outrage among animal rights activists who said doing so would be a breach of law.
The number of dogs should be kept under control because rabies is the "deadliest" among the diseases transmitted from animals to human, said Dr KBM Saiful Islam, the chairman of medicine and public health department at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University.
Killing the dogs, however, is not the solution because it is "inhumane" and "unscientific", he said.
Relocation of dogs cannot be the right approach either to deal with the issue, Saiful said.
"The scientific management is CNVR - capture, neuter, vaccinate and return. This is the way to control the dog population," he said. "You cannot manage the situation by only providing a rabies vaccine without controlling the number of dogs."
Controlling the dog population is one of the four strategies to eliminate rabies. The others include enhancing social programmes to raise public awareness about rabies and its treatment, ensuring modern treatment for dog bite, and vaccination and castration of dogs.
Though the other strategies are implemented, the authorities are yet to start working on controlling the number of stray dogs.
It is not their responsibility to control the number of dogs and they do not have enough staff to do it, said Professor Shahnila Ferdousi, the director of the Disease Control Department at DGHS.
"We're running the vaccination programme for the sake of public health. It's our job to ensure vaccination when someone is bitten by a dog. But it's their (Department of Livestock Services) responsibility to control the dog population. They have a trained workforce in every Upazila. They must take this responsibility."
But Abdul Jabbar, the director general of livestock services, said they do not have any system to control stray dog population.
"We can't catch stray dogs because we lack sufficient workforce," he said.