Do not gloss over the rabies disease burden

The death on Monday of a nine-year-old boy in Kabale District after contracting rabies from a stray dog opens an old festering wound in the country. The boy died on a day his contemporaries returned to school to have a crack at the third and final term of their academic year in Primary Three.

As the initial shock of the death gave way to retrospection, the urgency of the stray dog crisis made residents uncomfortable with the idea of inaction. They are not alone. In the capital, Kampala, where 6,000 of the 20,000-strong dog population is homeless, man’s so-called best friend continues to be regarded with complicated love and condescension.

If a new mood of impatience takes hold in Kampala following recent events in Kabale, this could be down to the fact that statistics barely paint a rosy picture. Kampala Capital City Authority or KCCA's dataset shows that, between January of 2016 and March of 2016, as many as 300 schoolchildren were bitten by stray dogs. More broadly, between 2015 and 2020, there were 36 deaths attributable to dog-mediated rabies out of nearly 15,000 cases registered.

The relatively low number of deaths is undoubtedly down to the availability of Post Exposure Prophylaxis or Pep. But as the tragically heart-rending case in Kibuga Parish, Kabale District, demonstrates, the medicine (Pep) that will set you back just over US$100 (if travel costs and loss of income are factored in) is prohibitively expensive for dwellers in rural outposts. So, the rabies problem pretty much persists.

What also makes this an old and festering wound is the manner in which the aforesaid problem is handled, if you can call it that. Such is the improvised precision dedicated to the problem that it invites reproach from animal rights activists. The bouts of poisoning that stray dogs are condemned to only succeed in fits and starts because such is their gruesomeness that a protracted exploration is sure to perpetually clothe KCCA in bad press.

One of the neglected tropical diseases, dog-transmitted human rabies, which per the World Health Organization has been eliminated from Western Europe, Canada, the United States of America, Japan and some Latin American countries, spreads through saliva via bites, scratches or direct contact with mucosa. In Uganda, it is quite evident that decisive action is needed for public safety.

While promises from state actors may well be the right tack, they have always felt insufficient, if not 19th Century-esque. The one thing that the state actors must be absolutely clear about is the rich rewards that emanate from embracing a proactive approach. Consequently, we advise that local councils be empowered to be in a position to vaccinate and neuter dogs. Public-private partnerships have to also be, we reckon, explored so as to ensure that municipal shelters are put up to take stray dogs off the streets.

The central government should also do everything remotely possible to ensure that it builds awareness of rabies and, above all, ensure that policy decisions are informed by the status quo. Short of that, the rabies disease burden will continue threading through the country with unintended sinister repercussions.

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