MC’s byte on dog bites: There is little we can do

Officials claim that there is little that they can do about the menace,apart from holding sterilisation drives or vaccinating the dogs. With the resources that are available,the civic body can sterilise around 100 dogs a month. There being around 8,000 stray dogs in the city,the drives are not proving affective.

With one of its own councillors and former Mayor Harjinder Kaur having been bitten by a stray dog,the civic body has decided to hold a drive to create awareness about giving first aid in case of dog bites. There is little else that the civic body has up its sleeve to tackle the menace. While there are by-laws that have been made for owners of pet dogs,there are no means to check stray dogs.

To add to the woes of people from the economically weaker sections (EWS),the cost of vaccines in case of a dog bite is high,with no provisions for free treatment. Each vaccine costs around Rs 300 and five vaccines are required in case of a dog bite. For deeper and more serious wounds,a serum has to be injected. While earlier this used to be available at the government dispensary,this has not been the case for the past few years. A demand has now been raised to look into the means of providing some economic relief to EWS patients.

“There have been no case of rabies reported from the city in the past year. Apart from sterilisation of the dogs and vaccination,there is not much that can be done to curb the menace of stray dogs. There are stringent guidelines about how the stray dogs can be tackled,” said a civic body official.