Shreya Kaura, 21, a resident of Pitampura, was on her way to the milk booth when a stray dog suddenly charged at her and bit her leg. Thankfully, the people around rushed her to the doctor and called her parents. Sita Sharma, 72, a resident of Mayur Vihar, had a similar experience in the balcony of her home. “I was putting clothes out to dry when a monkey suddenly jumped at me and bit my arm,” she says, showing the gaping wound on her arm. These are not just two stray cases.
An increasing number of people have been reporting about the getting attacked/ bitten by dogs/monkeys, ever since the lockdown began. These bites can lead to rabies, a disease caused by a virus transmitted to human body through infected saliva of a dog/monkey/cat/cattle if bitten by the said animal. Unfortunately, rabies can be fatal. There are two reasons for this. First, many people, especially the poor among whom these cases are found to be high, are unaware of the consequences of an animal bite. Second, rabies is not a notified disease in our country.
This is what worries doctors and other stakeholders in the healthcare sector, apart from the shortage of rabies shots, which government hospitals often complain of. At a Rabies Awareness Summit organised by the Integrated Health and Wellbeing (IHW) Council recently, medical experts, members of civil societies and industry called for a united front to bring rabies under notified diseases to eliminate it from India. On the condition of anonymity, a doctor at the Government Hospital in Noida informs that parents often bring in their children when it’s too late to save them.
“Most of these are poor people from villages in and around Noida. If admitted in time, rabies is 100 per cent treatable, but beyond a certain point it is 100 per cent fatal,” he says, adding that this is why it is important that the government notifies this disease. “Most cases of rabies in India are due to dog bites. Reports say one case of dog bite is reported every halfan- hour in our country, but then, may cases go unreported too,” says Kamal Narayan, CEO, IHW Council, while talking about why it is important to generate awareness about the disease.
Stating it is high time that the Union Health Ministry tackle the disease head on, rather that leaving it to animal lovers, People for Animals Chairperson Maneka Sanjay Gandhi calls for a focused animal birth control programme that includes sterilisation and vaccination. “We need a long-term programme like the one we have for polio, so that measures can be monitored and evaluated,” she says.
Agrees Sanjiv Navangul, CEO of Bharat Serums and Vaccines Limited: “Notifying rabies is the best way to tackle it as it will make the Health Ministry responsible for the disease as also address the lack of fund and policies.”
“There is a need to strengthen the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and formulate new strategy and action plan for National Rabies Control programme (NRCP),” says Dr Ashwath Narayana, President, Association for Prevention and Control of Rabies in India (APCRI), adding that school children should also be educated about the disease.
Awareness along with availability about vaccination is crucial to attain the World Health Organization’s ‘Zero by 30’ target, which aims to end human rabies deaths by 2030.