India’s booming stray dog population confounds efforts to eradicate rabies

Animal lovers can be more responsible by ensuring the dogs are not just fed, but also vaccinated and sterilised, so that localised dog population booms don’t happen, scientists tell Vishwam Sankaran

Stray dogs on a deserted road during a Covid lockdown in Kolkata (AFP via Getty Images)

In June this year, a stray dog entered a maternity ward in a private hospital in India’s busy northern city of Panipat in the early hours of the morning and picked up a newborn from beside its sleeping mother.

The family found the three-day-old’s body the next day outside the hospital, presumably mauled to death by a pack of dogs.

This is a common enough occurrence in India to warrant British veterinarian Andy Gibson to launch a mission over the last decade to eradicate rabies in the country that lives cheek by jowl with 40 million free-roaming dogs.