BHUBANESWAR : The capital city is yet again witnessing an alarming rise in dog bite cases.
In the last one-and-a-half month, around 500 people have taken anti-rabies injection from the BMC hospital in the capital city. Similarly, the Capital Hospital has this year received more than 100 cases every day, particularly during the breeding season (October, November and December) when the dogs are the most aggressive.
The increasing population of stray dogs and rising dog bite cases are being attributed to the improper implementation of the ABC programme. The dog sterilisation drive was put on hold in June this year by the Orissa High Court following a petition filed by an animal rights activist Biswajit Pradhan alleging mismanagement in the birth control surgeries of the canines by a private party engaged by the BMC.
Mayor Sulochana Das, on the other hand, said the drive will begin soon as the high court has recently vacated the stay. The BMC will finalise a new agency to implement the drive which includes catching the strays, sterilising them and releasing them in their area after post-operative care.
“We are in the process of preparing the tender which would be floated for selecting an agency. However, since the stray dog menace has grown into an alarming proportion, we have decided to start the drive immediately with one veterinarian and the limited number of dog catching staff that BMC has,” Das said.
Earlier in the Assembly, Fisheries and Animal Resources Development minister Gokulananda Mallik had informed that Odisha has recorded 5.20 lakh dog bite cases since the beginning of 2023 till October this year. The state reported an average of 23,647 dog bite incidents per month, according to a written reply tabled in the House.
According to the last Livestock Census released in 2022, the stray dog population in Bhubaneswar was close to 40,000. The Fisheries and Animal Resources Development (FARD) department runs the ABC programme in 12 urban areas - Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Sambalpur, Angul, Jagatsinghpur, Baripada, Berhampur, Balasore, Bhawanipatna, Rourkela and Jajpur. The FARD report of 2022 stated that 2,150 stray dogs were sterilised in 2021-22 whereas the number was 1,024 the year before in Bhubaneswar.