Every year in India thousands of dogs are killed by those who fear they carry rabies, the virus that is also fatal for humans.
This mass killing can be stopped if the disease is controlled and people’s fear stamped out, which is why Maltese vet Victoria Bondin joined a campaign to help do just that.
“There is the animal welfare aspect because we are helping to stop the mass killing of dogs. But we are also saving people’s lives,” Dr Bondin said on her return.
The 27-year-old vet spent two weeks in Madurai, south of India, volunteering for the Mission Rabies Campaign, a three-year campaign pioneered by the World Veterinary Service and Dogs Trust with the aim of vaccinating as many dogs as possible against the rabies virus.
“Our team – Team Madurai – vaccinated about 8,600 dogs in the space of 10 days. These were mostly stray dogs caught in nets by teams of experienced dog catchers,” she said, adding that vaccinated dogs were marked with a non-toxic spray paint.
Catching the dogs was no easy task. “It was as though they were telling each other to stay away from the humans in yellow T-shirts,” she joked, referring to the Mission Rabies’ bright tops.
In the first part of the campaign, Dr Bondin and other volunteers spent last month in India where they managed to vaccinate 55,000 dogs. The exercise will be repeated annually for the next three years with the aim of vaccinating at least 70 per cent of dogs, the minimum coverage proven to be needed to stop the spread of rabies.
As a vet working with strays, Dr Bondin had to take the rabies pre-exposure vaccine and anyone who was bitten by a dog also took the post-exposure jab as a precaution. She was not bitten but, together with the rest of her team, took the post-exposure vaccine after coming face-to-face with a rabid dog outside their hotel. The dog was put down.
Dr Bondin explained that rabies, transmitted mainly from an infected dog bite, was estimated to kill about 55,000 people worldwide each year including 25,000 in India. Over half of them are children.
The Mission Rabies project includes a campaign that will help educate people about the need for urgent treatment on being bitten.