Do no harm

Time after time, the CBC and the KMC come up with the irrational dog culling campaign. These drives have become quite common in Karachi. Stray dogs are mercilessly gunned down, left wounded to eventually die or poisoned. Poisoning the dogs is the worst since the poison results in deadly seizure that last for around 50 minutes. Until their death, they have to deal with immense pain when each organ fails. Vaccination is the only logical and humane solution to this problem. Several countries including Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Nepal follow the Worlds Health Organisation’s recommended mass vaccination and sterilisation campaigns to tackle the issue of unabated rise in the population of stray animals. In India, it is illegal to kill street dogs.

A sustained animal birth control programme combined with widespread rabies immunisation is the only method of reducing the spread of rabies that has been the only reason for the culling. The concerned authorities are requested to stop this inhumane killing of stray dogs immediately, and adopt the logical process of sterilising them to control their population.

Rimsha Aijaz

Karachi