Coimbatore: A census carried out in 2022 claimed that the city municipal corporation has a population of 1.11 lakh stray dogs. Can all the stray dogs in the city be vaccinated for rabies? The city municipal corporation says that its main objective is to carry out mass vaccination of dogs for rabies through ‘Mission Rabies’.Mission Rabies is a global initiative by Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) focused on eliminating dog-mediated rabies through mass dog vaccination, community education, and rabies surveillance.In India, Mission Rabies has been working since 2013, and Goa has been successfully implementing the project for more than a decade to control rabies.“We used NGOs to conduct the census on the stray dog population in all five zones in the corporation, and the census showed that the city has 1.11 lakh stray dogs. It is a huge population. We have decided to implement the Mission Rabies initiative. We started the initiative at Race Course two months ago. Our aim is to cover all the stray dogs by conducting a mass dog vaccination programme,” city corporation commissioner M Sivaguru Prabakaran said.The city corporation plans to launch a hotline exclusively to report rabies-related cases if the public suspects that stray dogs or pet dogs are infected with rabies. Based on the information, mapping will be carried out by a team.“After completing the mass dog vaccination for stray dogs in the five zones of the municipal corporation, we are planning door-to-door vaccination for pet animals, including dogs and cats, to prevent rabies,” Sivaguru Prabakaran said.To control the population of stray dogs, the corporation has been implementing sterilisation at the four Animal Birth Control (ABC) centres located at Ukkadam, Ondipudur, Seeranaickenpalayam, and Vellalore. “We believe that through sterilisation, the stray dogs’ population can be reduced drastically in the future. So, we are planning to open three more ABC centres in the city,” he added.The corporation also claimed that approximately 25,000 stray dogs were sterilised out of 1.11 lakh stray dogs since 2023.
