HYDERABAD: For every day in August, the Osmania General Hospital reported a case of dog bite, taking the toll to over 33 cases across the month. These high numbers refused to die down as just in the first two days of September, 5 cases of dog bites were rushed in, which included the horrifying case of a toddler getting mauled, which left deep wounds across his scalp.
According to officials from the Veterinary department of GHMC one of the most pertinent being faced by them is that they are short staffed. At present there are only 28-30 veterinary doctors assigned to the entire GHMC area with each of the 5 zones of GHMC only having 3-4 doctors on an average, some zones have only 1 doctor to perform the Animal Birth Control operations.
While it takes anywhere around 5 to 30 minutes to perform birth control surgeries on male and female dogs respectively, the lack of recovery space and the lack of doctors is stunting the number of surgeries performed to only 10 on an average daily. “The GHMC also acts only on complaint based system, which means only when a complaint is raised are they picking dogs for sterilization, which may leave some dogs out of the ambit,” added Amala Akkineni of Blue cross.
Within ORR, there are many Panchayats which are densely populated and have no means of conducting sterilization. “We often get calls from neighbouring panchayats, but that we aren’t authorised to send dog catching vehicles,” said a senior official.
Too many dogs, too few doctors
At present there are only 28-30 veterinary doctors assigned to the entire GHMC area with each of the 5 zones of GHMC only having 3-4 doctors on an average