National dog sterilization programme in CP - some questions

Champa FERNANDO

As an animal welfare group that introduced humane dog handling and early-age neutering to Sri Lanka and provided a model to initiate the national dog sterilization programme and worked for more than a decade hand in hand with the Health Ministry, supporting its rabies control programme conceptually as well as financially in order to bring about a humane rabies control programme to eradicate rabies from Sri Lanka, it is indeed sad to see the mauling up of new born stray/ownerless pups and their lactating mothers in the Central Province by some contract vets who were awarded the sterilizations, despite the Central Province Governor's directive to them not to sterilize new born stray pups or lactating strays.

Apart from the accepted veterinary practices that were taught to these vets at the Vet Faculty of the University of Peradeniya, it is also the President's humane vision that is being compromised by them.

Ownerless pups

On October 5 these vets, who are paid per surgery by the government, sterilized a set of less than three-week old ownerless pups and their lactating mother and on November 17, just 10 days after the Governor's directive to desist from such sterilizations, they sterilized two 4-5 week old pups and several lactating mothers who have been rendered ownerless since September 26, as their sole owner, a woman, had died on that day.

When the second set of puppies and lactating mothers were sterilized by these vets, another animal welfare organization in Kandy, SOFA, was already looking after the welfare of these animals, some of whom had been pregnant when they first saw the dogs on September 26, and were going to have them sterilized, leaving out the pups and the mothers for later.

Nowhere in the world are new born pups or their mothers sterilized. And no discerning vet would cut up animals so indiscriminately. It is also sad and ironical that this carnage is taking place in Kandy and Central Province, in the very precincts of the Dalada Maligawa, a place of Buddhist worship of the highest order and a place from which people and the country alike get their blessings.

Government funds

We have written to the Health Ministry that it is a waste of government funds to sterilize stray/ownerless pups of less than three months, as more than 90 percent of these pups do not survive for more than a month or two after birth. Most do not reach the re-productive stage. Even under the best care and after de-worming and sometimes vaccination against parvo and distemper by animal welfarists/lovers, still large numbers of puppies that are born as strays die.

Instead of sterilizing stray/ownerless pups, they should be vaccinated against rabies as recommended in a study by Dr. Panduka Gunawradene et al. (Should Puppies under Three Months of Age be Vaccinated Against Rabies? P.18, Annual Scientific Sessions of the Sri Lanka Veterinary Association, May 7, 2010.)

The study recommends that pups under three months of age should be vaccinated owing to the inadequacy of the maternal antibody levels to protect the pups from rabies. The study further recommends a booster vaccination at three months of age to increase the pups' RVNA (rabies virus neutralizing antibody) titres.

Vaccination programme

So it makes sense that stray/ownerless pups and lactating mothers be first given the ARV under the ministry's dog rabies vaccination programme. The surviving animals can be sterilized thereafter when they are three or four months old. The argument that these animals are potential rabies carriers and therefore should be sterilized does not hold water and is being put forward purely in order to use these hapless animals as fodder to earn money.

Payments made to these vets to sterilize animals that have perhaps less than 5 percent chance of surviving and 0 percent of an immediate contribution to the dog population is a waste of precious public funds.

By stopping sterilization of stray/ownerless pups of less than three months and instead having them vaccinated against rabies, the ministry, on the one hand, will be able to arrest transmission of rabies conforming to its dog rabies control programme as well as save a considerable amount of money spent on sterilization of non-productive animals that will anyway die from natural causes before they reach the productive stage, and on the other can eliminate the dehumanizing elements of its essentially humane dog population control programme, initiated to accommodate the no-kill policy on dogs proclaimed by the President.?

The writer is the Secretary, KACPAW (Kandy Association for Community Protection through Animal Welfare)