KARACHI: With the government assuring that it was making required vaccine available for patients of dog bite, such cases had tangibly increased in the metropolis as various hospitals on Friday reported that they had received dozens of victims in the past two days.

There is a fear in the public sector hospitals that their stocks of vaccine against dog bite are going to run short as Pakistan mainly relies on India to purchase vaccine. However, the neighbouring country has decided not to sell it elsewhere since the drug it produces itself is hardly sufficient for its population of over a billion people.

“It is going to be very hard for hospitals to immunise victims of dog bite in future because of India’s changed policy while the number of such cases is on the rise since we have no effective strategy to control population of dogs,” an expert told Dawn.

Executive director of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Dr Seemin Jamali, said the number of dog bite cases had substantially increased in the past two days when the hospital received scores of patients.

“We have received seven such victims from Model Colony alone who have been bitten by a single dog and that dog is still straying free,” said Dr Jamali.

She said it should be highly concerning where a single dog was found to have bitten so many people.

She said the hospital was immunising people against dog bite, most of whom had already been bitten. However, certain people, dog trainers for example, came to hospital for immunisation as well.

Dr Jamali said rabies was a fatal disease, a viral illness that was transmitted to humans if they were bitten by a rabid animal, mostly dogs, which could be prevented through vaccine.

However, it has no cure if the victim gets full-blown viral infection.

Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani said the earlier policy vis-à-vis killing of dogs had been heavily criticised after which the method was revised to sterilise the stray animals.

He said it had been responsibility of the district municipal corporations concerned to launch campaign against stray dogs.

An official at the Indus Hospital said a number of dog bite cases had also been received at the facility. A number of those victims were badly bitten by stray dogs.

12 victims this year

The officials said some 12 people had been bitten by rabid dogs and died thus far this year in the city. The JPMC official said seven of those patients were received by her hospital.

The Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi, meanwhile, also received dozens of similar cases from various parts of the city and elsewhere in the province, yet, it is facing shortage of anti-rabies vaccine for many days.

The CHK rabies centre provides ARV shots and immunoglobulin to prevent the dog bite victims from contracting rabies. Officials, however, said vaccine from India had dried up and so far the untested Chinese alternative was not officially approved.

The stocks of ARV are still available in JPMC and some other hospitals in the city, which too would go dry soon.

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2019