By Bernard Unti, Ph.D.
The news of a government-ordered onslaught in late July that killed 50,000 dogs in Mouding County in Yunnan Province in southwestern China, and reports of an impending second dog kill in east China's Shandong Province, mark a terrible stage in a long-running debate over effective rabies control in the developing world. The brutality and scope of the five-day Yunnan slaughter—which spared only military and police dogs—prompted waves of criticism both within and outside of China.
Reacting to the killing, Humane Society International, the global arm of The HSUS, urged the Chinese government to adopt humane and effective rabies prevention strategies. Citing its experience in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Indonesia, HSI also offered to assist Chinese government at all levels in efforts to avoid such an episode in the future.
Summarizing HSI's position that indiscriminate mass killing of dogs is ineffective as a rabies control measure, HSUS CEO and President Wayne Pacelle wrote Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong that "a preventative program will work to safeguard public health related to rabies and at the same time preserve the integrity and positive image of China."
HSI has worked with officials and communities in a number of countries, seeking to persuade them of the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns over indiscriminate killing of animal populations. Unfortunately, such culls are still common in developing nations, where some health authorities have not yet recognized mass vaccination as the most reliable means for slowing or halting the spread of rabies.
HSI has also had to make this same point to the leaders of developed nations, as in the case of the U.S. Department of Defense, which has made mass slaughter of dogs its preferred option in Iraq since the American occupation began there in 2003. Two years after The HSUS and HSI first asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to institute a vaccination program in Iraq, where military veterinarians are in place and could demonstrate the value of alternate approaches, the killing of strays and unmanaged pets continues unabated.
Controlling Rabies in Asia
Rabies is a serious problem in China and in other parts of Asia. Asia has the highest reported global incidence of rabies, accounting for between 80 and 90 percent of the worldwide total. In recent years, China has had the second-highest reported rates of human illness and death from rabies with at least 2650 deaths recorded in 2004 (India surpasses all other nations with approximately 30,000 rabies deaths per year). The disease is especially prominent in the southern provinces bordered by the Yangtse River, where the human-to-dog ratio is somewhat higher. According to a December 2005 Chinese-led study, dogs are the pivotal vector in an estimated 85 to 95 percent of rabies cases, and some 50 to 70 percent occur in rural areas.
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Officials collecting dog bodies. Credit: AP |
A number of Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore, have successfully eradicated rabies through animal control and immunization programs. And the evidence favoring vaccination strategies continues to grow. In a November 2004 medical journal article, five international public health specialists focused on a rabies outbreak on Flores Island, Indonesia argued that "massive culling of the dog population, without an intensive vaccination campaign of the survivors, will not arrest an outbreak.
In India, there is preliminary data that capture, neuter, vaccinate, and release programs may be able to eliminate human rabies as a serious problem. Such programs have reduced the number of human rabies cases in Jaipur, Bangalore, and Chennai, and a controlled study is now underway in Jodphur, with support from HSI and other organizations.
Mandatory mass vaccination campaigns would present their own challenges, including acquiring supplies of vaccine, mobilizing trained vaccinators, distributing public education materials, and developing appropriate logistical facilities (transport, coolers, etc.) and medical infrastructure in rural communities. With reports of about 70 percent of rural households in China keeping dogs, however, the urgency and necessity of a modern rabies control program coordinated by human health, animal health, and municipal authorities should be self-evident.
Such a program would naturally complement the increased popularity of dogs in China. After being shunned as symbols of bourgeois decadence in the decades of Mao Zedong's leadership, there has been a marked increase in the number of owned dogs in the country, and there may be as many as 150 million pet dogs in the world's most populous nation—one for every nine people. In Beijing, where pet owners spend an estimated 60 million U.S. dollars on their pets every year, canine rabies has reportedly been contained through licensing and compulsory vaccination programs.
That's not the only good news coming from the Chinese capital, either. The Legal Daily, a state-owned newspaper issued by the Ministry of Justice, responded to reports of the killings by blasting local and regional officials. Perhaps anticipating the pressure that many hope the central government will bring to bear upon its provincial counterparts, the newspaper disdained the killings as an "extraordinarily crude, cold-blooded and lazy way for the government to deal with epidemic disease."
