Elimination, vaccination of stray dogs to proceed

Luh De Suryani, ,  Contributor, ,  Denpasar   |  Sat, 12/27/2008 10:55 AM  |  Bali

The Bali provincial administration will widen the scope of its rabies handling program this Sunday in South Denpasar, putting down or vaccinating stray dogs despite negative sentiment from animal rights communities.

Dr. Dewa Dharma, a medical expert in rabies handling, confirmed that the government would continue culling stray dogs, while vaccinating others, in the hopes of eradicating a possible rabies outbreak after recent deaths due to the virus in Uluwatu, south Bali.

"This program, called the immune belt, is already underway. We're expanding from the Badung regency's higher north to south Denpasar," he said at a media discussion at Inna Hotel in Denpasar, earlier this week.

"This is to prevent the disease from spreading higher to the northern regions of Bali."

The government has vaccinated 3,016 dogs in Badung regency, mostly in the southern Kuta district and has culled 300 stray dogs.

He said the program had managed to prevent other cases from emerging.

He said officials from the Bali Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Agency would continue to test the vaccinated dogs in the Badung and South Denpasar area with antibodies to confirm the vaccination had worked.

Dharma said the government must move on with the vaccination and elimination program.

"Elimination is a must. Public health is an important thing. Wandering dogs are a big problem today with the condition of a possible rabies outbreak," he said.

"A dog with rabies can infect dozens of other dogs within a single week."

The rabies handling team from the agency estimated that there were 540,000 dogs in Bali, a one to six ratio to the 3.5 million people living in Bali.

The rabies handling method has been subject to heavy criticism from the medical and animal rights communities.

I Gusti Ngurah Mahardika, a volunteer in the agency's rabies handling team and head of the Biomedical and Molecular Laboratory at the Udayana University, said he knew about the negative sentiments and that the team continued to find ways of handling a possible outbreak more humanely.

"It's tough because we don't have the technology. Other mass and humane culling methods besides poisoning are unavailable, while the gas chamber method is out of the question," he said.

He defended the culling method, saying the government opted for elimination because of the virus' long incubation period, from 14 to 90 days, which made it possible for the virus to leave the host through its saliva even before the host showed any symptoms.

"We're fighting the virus here and not the dogs. Rabies is 100 percent preventable if all the programs are conducted correctly," he said.

"It's just unfortunate that the dog bioecological condition in Bali remains unclear. Most dogs have owners but they just let them loose, while the rest are really wild dogs."

In a related development, the provincial administration has decided to distribute information kits on rabies prevention, child protection and first aid to bite cases.

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