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240,000 Dogs in Bali Vaccinated to Prevent Rabies
Thursday, 30 July 2015
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Denpasar –Livestock and Animal Health Services of Bali Province and 9 Districts/Municipalities on the island vaccinated 240,000 dogs against rabies to prevent the disease from spreading further.
Head of Bali Province Livestock and Animal Health Services, Putu Sumantra, in Denpasar on Thursday (30/7) said although the 6th phase of mass rabies vaccination ends on July 31, 2015, the government will continue to sweep areas missed by the vaccination campaign.
Sumantra predicts the dog population in Bali to be over 400,000 animals and so far only 240,000 dogs have been vaccinated.
“For this sweeping, officers can be called by people whose dogs have not been vaccinated or people can bring their dogs to vaccination posts. Officers will also go to areas they consider need vaccination,” he said.
The government urges the public to stop being passive and give excuses to not vaccinate their dogs against rabies. “So far rabies has been found in 145 of 716 villages in Bali,” said Sumantra.
Sumantra admits there are challenges in reaching and vaccinating all dogs in Bali. One challenge is the abundance of stray/feral dogs and owned dogs allowed to roam freely by their owners.
“It’s very difficult for us to eliminate stray/feral dogs and deal with dogs that are allowed to roam by their owners. So no matter how serious we are, as long as people are ignorant, it will be difficult to eradicate rabies,” said Sumantra.
He hopes people will also take care in moving, taking, adopting and buying dogs because now the symptoms of dogs with rabies is different from when the campaign first started.
Sumantra also encourages cat owners who want to vaccinate their cats for fear of rabies.
“So far, there is no rabies case associated with cats. There was one suspect case in Klungkung, however after brain samples from the cat was examined, it was negative for rabies. So rabies was not the reason why one person from Klungkung died after being scratched by a cat,” said Sumantra.
Source: Antara/Berita Satu
