07 March,2024 01:14 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
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Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation on Thursday said that they have administered vaccines to 26,951 canines as part of the ongoing pulse anti-rabies immunisation campaign aimed at halting the disease's spread to people.
A BMC release, per the PTI report, stated that with the assistance of the non-profit Worldwide Veterinary Services--Mission Rabies, 10 of 25 civic wards were covered during a special campaign that ran from February 26 to March 1 as part of this initiative.
The general manager of the BMC's Deonar Abattoir and Animal Husbandry department, Dr Kalimpasha Pathan, told PTI that the civic body had covered 10-12 wards the previous year and that 10 more had been covered during the most recent campaign.
"This is a continuous process and the remaining wards will be covered very soon," he stated.
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Humans can contract the deadly but avoidable virus known as rabies by coming into contact with the saliva of an infected animal.
An earlier report in mid-day stated that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had launched a major initiative to vaccinate stray dogs, with about 35,000 to 40,000 canines already immunised since September 2023.
Dr Kalimpasha Pathan, head of BMC's veterinary health department and the Deonar Abattoir, had then said that the program, which is thought to be first of its kind, intended to vaccinate around 1 lakh stray animals in coming months.
The vaccination drive has received assistance from several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim, which provides vaccines for free, BMC said. The campaign, which focuses mostly on the western suburbs where dog bite events are common, addresses a significant public health issue, given the city's annual average of 60,000 documented dog bite cases.
In addition to immunisation, BMC placed Near Field Communication (NFC) tags on 300 to 400 stray dogs in September, which included information such as gender, vaccination status, and pet status. Dr Pathan said it was an experimental measure facilitated by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), with continuous study to determine its efficacy and prospective growth.
Meanwhile, on January 16, BMC began its annual domestic animal and stray dog census, which had been postponed for a year. The number of stray dogs in the city was believed to be about 96,000 in the 2014 census, but current estimates indicate that it may have topped 1.6 lakh.
