Sterilisation campaign fails to fix Delhi's growing stray dog menace

New Delhi: Stray dogs are having a free run on the streets of Delhi. With about 15-20 dog bites reported every day, sterilisation campaigns by the civic agency don't seem to have borne fruit even as the Commonwealth Games are approaching.

Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) officials feel a long-pending proposal to set up 10 dog sterilisation centres in the city should be implemented fast.

"With the October Commonwealth Games around the corner, we want to do away with the problem of stray dogs. There are over 280,000 stray dogs in the city," a senior MCD official told IANS, requesting anonymity.

"We do not have a sufficient number of centres to treat or vaccinate them. And not enough NGOs are working in the area," he added.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), around 36 per cent of the world's rabies deaths occur in India each year, and that too mostly when children come into contact with infected dogs.

R.B.S. Tyagi, MCD veterinary services director, claimed, "The corporation is taking effective measures to sterilise stray dogs. The proposed sterilisation centres in the city will take a year to be constructed. The centres were finalised three months ago."

The civic body has been running the task of sterilisation of dogs with the help of various NGOs since 2003. Nine of them were roped in for the purpose.

An MCD official said: "We have been running dog sterilisation campaigns with the help of NGOs since 2003, but they have not yielded satisfactory results."