Rabid dogs

I have somehow overlooked my drivers license expiring. 20 years is a long time - and I recently found out that it had expired in May! That too the dear document was a shabby paper jobbie from Dehra Dun when it was still part of Uttar Pradesh. It will take some time to get a brand new smart-card style license made here. So till I get my new one I am doing a lot of walking these days.

The other day I saw something I had never seen. A thin, mangy dog with foamy saliva dripping from his mouth. It was the thinnest dog imaginable - and seemed oddly detached - circling round itself in the middle of the shady street near our office. But it had the menace of that dreaded disease of rabies all over it.

While getting a ride back from a late-night church leaders meeting - my friend told me that one of the reasons we have so many dogs roaming around was because of Menaka Gandhi's animal welfare activism while she was in power. "Prior to her the dog squad would come and take the animals and drop them in the jungle - where they became food for wild animals. Now they are sterilised and returned back to where they are picked up."

Dog sterilisation doesn't seem to be working - there are plenty of mongrels of all shapes and sizes - and some of the most equisitely horrible suppurating wounds all over their backs - living wrecks.

But back to rabies. Every now and then our friends will bring a child in and say that a dog bit it. Off to the government hospital for the rabies vaccine!

Sadly - a decade ago - a little boy in Mussoorie did not get the vaccine in time. His parents had come to India from the US and were living in Mussoorie - and their son was a friend of the animals. It seems that the little boy was never bitten - but often licked by the stray dogs he befriended. Much later the parents found out to their sadness that the strange disease their son had was rabies. He was shifted to a hospital in Delhi but of no avail. He died.

Amazingly, it is now possible to survive rabies. A young woman lives in the US today as testimony to it. Joanna Giese has now survived for 5 years after she was found to have rabies - and given an induced coma by physicians who then administered anti-virals to knock out the rabies in her - before bringing her back to consciousness.

The heart of any good public health practitioner is always warmed with miracle survivor stories, is made happy to see people get prompt treatment after early detection, but really rejoices when the root cause of the disease is removed. The time has come - and is long overdue - for our dear wandering mongrels to be promoted to the happy hunting grounds - and only those hounds who have human care-givers looking directly after them to be allowed to roam the streets of Mumbai town. Alas, to do such a thing would incur the wrath of sundry citizens. In the mean-time more rabid dogs stagger the streets.