Mega-shelters for India's stray dogs: a public health and human rights alarm

India is at a crossroads, facing a public-health and ethical crisis that has attracted far less scrutiny than it deserves.

- MALLIKA SARABHAI

The Supreme Court's recent direction to remove all stray dogs and confine them in mega-shelters is being projected as a fix for dog bites and rabies. Yet evidence, science and plain common sense point to the opposite outcome: a serious threat to human health, animal welfare and constitutional balance.

From a public-health standpoint, mass detention of dogs in large, enclosed shelters recreates the very conditions that accelerate zoonotic diseases — conditions disturbingly reminiscent of those that fuelled the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds or thousands of stressed animals housed together mean high viral loads, persistent faeco-oral contamination, poor ventilation aiding respiratory transmission, and weakened immunity due to chronic stress and malnutrition. Rabies, parvovirus, distemper, leptospirosis, giardia and emerging canine influenza strains spread far more rapidly in such environments. Globally, mass animal housing is treated as a biohazard, governed by strict protocols to prevent spillover to humans. India currently lacks the infrastructure and expertise to operate such facilities safely, creating a foreseeable risk to people.