Focus on rabies control, not stray dog population

The current debate about whether stray dogs in Delhi should have a home on the street or be rounded up into pounds has generated strong feelings on all sides.

- Ramanan Laxminarayan

Regardless of which way a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court rules, the fundamental challenge remains curbing of rabies, the disease reported to be responsible for the death of the six-year-old which sparked this debate. Removing the roughly million stray dogs from Delhi's streets will only reduce rabies cases and deaths by less than 2% nationwide.

A more productive public health approach would be to focus on rabies rather than stray dogs. India has had enormous success in infectious disease control through vaccinations, examples being smallpox, polio, maternal tetanus and most recently, Covid-19.

The country can then surely make significant progress towards the World Health Organization (WHO)'s goal of zero rabies deaths by 2030 without eliminating the 60 million stray dogs in India.

But we are far from that goal. India accounts for one in three rabies deaths globally and over two-thirds in Asia. According to WHO data, there are an estimated 18,000-20,000 deaths from rabies each year in India.

In comparison, China, which has 40 million stray dogs, reported an average of only 433 rabies cases per year between 2015 and 2021. The number of rabies deaths has declined from 3,300 in 2007 to fewer than 300 deaths in 2020.