On a 24-hour dog hunt

CMC's drive to vaccinate stray animals and rid Colombo of rabies:

By Carol Aloysius

What is it like to wake up at the crack of dawn and spend the next two or three hours groping your way through the darkened streets, stumbling over potholes in by lanes and side lanes, squeezing your body through twisting narrow alleys layered with cat and dog poo and worse, crawling with rats, just to track down stray dogs who may be carrying the deadly rabies virus?

For most of us, it would be an unpleasant task we would rather avoid. But not to the small dedicated team from the Colombo Municipal Veterinary Department, collectively fired by one mission: to eliminate rabies and make Colombo a Rabies Free City.

"We were receiving reports that the number of rabid stray dogs roaming Colombo streets was on the rise, which worried us. So as a first step to solve this problem, we decided to do a physical count of the number of stray dogs who had made the city their habitat," explains Chief Municipal Veterinary Surgeon of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), Dr Vipula Dharmawardene.

According to him, a baseline survey conducted by a non-governmental organisation on the roaming dog population in Colombo in 2007 revealed an estimated 5737 dogs.

"We needed to update those figures. So last June (2015), we did a physical count again. This time the figures showed 2,400 stray dogs. This showed that the numbers had declined, mostly due to our ongoing anti rabies vaccination and sterilisation programmes. However , we were concerned that some of the strays still roaming the streets, could have escaped our attention , as they are constantly on the move , some even travelling to the city from faraway places," he says.

With the CMC aiming at declaring Colombo City a Rabies Free Zone by 2018, it was evident that the Vet Department needed to do something soon, to come up with an efficient strategic plan that would help them move closer to their target.

That 'something' turned out to be a massive anti-rabies immunisation and sterilisation program targeting all of the stray dogs in the city.

Locate

"It was not an easy task," says Dr Dharmawardene in retrospect, as he explains the preparations that went in prior to the programme, which took off the ground in all 47 wards of the city simultaneously. "These dogs are constantly on the move. 'To count them we had to first find them'. That meant going to all forty seven wards in the city in order to locate their usual haunts. In order to track them, we had to make our way through narrow twisting alleys, hopscotch over open sewer drains and walk along darkened streets pitted with potholes, with only the aid of our torches."

So where did that nightmarish journey lead them?

"To the regular haunts of almost all the stray dogs in the city," he says, adding that what they had discovered about the stray dogs was that most of them set up their regular 'homes' on public roads, roundabouts, bus stands, railway stations, overcrowded shanty gardens, under shady trees, on school playgrounds and parks, bridges, pavements, near hospitals or inside hospital premises.

"Mostly we found them near eating outlets - small wayside restaurants and eating houses. We also found them huddled near temples, churches and mosques where free rice packets are often given to them by kind hearted animal lovers."

Once a stray was located, the team then mapped out the exact spot where it was found and took photos of the dogs in their exact locations. " The maps and photos were to help us catch these dogs and once they were vaccinated and immunised , return them to the same place where they were found," Dr Dharmawardene explains.

Collect

The next step was to collect them. Once identified, the Municipal Vet Department dispatched its small white and blue vans manned by their 'dog catchers' wearing protective uniforms like gloves and boots and accompanied by a vet. Using special equipment and sedatives, in case the dogs resisted capture, they then transported their 'charges' to the Dog Pound. There, they were examined by a vet, given the anti rabies vaccination. After this they were tagged and marked with a special marker paint, and details noted down for a records system being maintained listing all details of the newly vaccinated dogs according to their sex, colour, approximate age and place and the date where they had been seized and vaccinated.

The dogs would then be sterilised to control the stray population, and kept under veterinary observation for a few days, before being returned to their usual haunts, from where they had been picked up.

Promising

Despite occasional hitches such as when some of their senior officers were bitten by stray dogs, the programme's promising results was a cause for celebration by the CMC. As Dr Dharmawardene notes with justified pride, "Before the year 2000, there were fifty positive cases of rabid dogs in the city. The number plunged drastically to a mere three in 2015. This year so far no cases of rabies have been reported. If we can sustain this zero score for the next three years, we can declare Colombo city to be Rabies Free by the year 2018."

School children

To realise this goal, and because rabies is still a little understood disease , especially among school children who are at high risk of being bitten by rabid strays while on their way to school or even on school grounds, he says they had decided to introduced a novel project, targeting mainly school children..

"We decided to conduct an awareness raising programme targeting school children. We held lectures, discussions and distributed pamphlets on rabies. In addition we also held an art exhibition on the same subject. Over eight hundred children from year 1 to year 13 took part in the contest in five categories and each participant was awarded a certificate - with the first prize winner being awarded Rs 15,000 in cash. All the participants received cash gifts.

"Ananda College, which won 10 awards, also received an Excellence Award. There was also a stage play on rabies presented by students of Mahanama College. The programme had such good feedback and response that in collaboration with the Health Ministry and Education Ministry we plan to conduct similar programmes every year."

Although he could now afford to rest on his well deserved laurels, Dr Dharmawardene says he has started compiling a calendar about rabies. "It will be another unique project, as it will include all pertinent facts on rabies and how one can protect oneself from being bitten by a rabid dog. We will be including visuals and photos of our services as well. . We hope to make it available by next year", he promised

Dr Dharmawardene further informs the CMC Vet Department annually registers and vaccinates around 10,000 dogs in the City.

He says owned Dogs are vaccinated by conducting following programmes: 1) House to House Vaccination programmes where Veterinary Supervisors visit the houses of all dog owners, 2). Centre Vaccination programme ( at Temples, Playgrounds, Community Centres etc) and 3) at Anti Rabies Clinics conducted every Thursday from 8.00 am to 12.00

"All vaccines and sterilisation of dogs are free of charge if done in a government facility", he emphasised.