DOGS
20,000 cases of bites a day in India in 2019. Dog bites behind 96% rabies cases
MONKEYS
1,000 cases of bites a day in cities; cause rabies and other zoonotic diseases
PIGEONS
Droppings can cause lung infections like hypersensitivity pneumonitis, cryptococcal meningitis and psittacosis
DOGS
TERRITORIAL DISPUTE
Everyone agrees that stray dogs are a problem, but divisions remain over policies to manage their numbers
ON THE morning of April 11, 2023, Adersh left for the market and never returned home. At night, the police recovered his body from the playground of Shastri Nagar Intermediate College in Maharajganj, Uttar Pradesh. The 11-year-old had died after being attacked by a pack of stray dogs in the middle of the day. The dogs had bitten off his right hand and mauled his face. A similar incident was reported in Hyderabad this February, when stray dogs killed a four-year-old playing in the parking area of a car service centre where his father worked as a security guard. The incident was captured on a CCTV camera, and the video has since gone viral.
India recorded 1.92 million dog-bites in 2022, or an average of 5,200 incidents a day. In 2019, before coVID-19 pandemic gripped the country, dog-bite incidents were 7.28 million. Owing to the rising menace, India made reporting of all rabies cases in humans mandatory in 2021, and the figure jumped to 47,291 from 733 in 2020 (see 'Conservative estimates').
This story is from the June 16, 2023 edition of Down To Earth.
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This story is from the June 16, 2023 edition of Down To Earth.
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Hold polluting industries accountable for public health risks, environmental hazards, climate change; provide them support for green transition
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