KULOB, January 25, 2012, Asia-Plus — 425 residents in the city and the district of Kulob were attacked by stray dogs last year, the Kulob chief sanitary inspector Jamshed Rafiyev told Asia-Plus Wednesday afternoon.
According to him, a seven-year-old boy died of dog bite in the city of Kulob last year. Rafiyev considers that it is necessary to pass a law on responsibility of pet owners.
“73 percent of the overall number of aggressive dogs in the area has owners but no administrative action has been imposed upon them so far,” Rafiyev said, noting that the law must regulate ownership of potentially aggressive domestic animals.
Rafiyev noted that 435 stray dos were exterminated in the city and the district of Kulob last year.
The Kulob chief sanitary inspector says treating people who have been bitten by dogs that may be infected with rabies is an expensive procedure. According to him, the local authorities and medical facilities have to purchase ant-rabies vaccines on their own. “In all, 12,000 somoni were spent last year to purchase the anti-rabies vaccine doses, while the authorities annually allocate only 5,000 somoni for purchasing medicines and 3,440 somoni of this amount are used for purchasing the ant-rabies doses,” Rafiyev said.
“Three years ago, five doses of the anti-rabies vaccine cost 174.00 somoni, while today they cost 650.00 somoni,” the Kulob chief sanitary inspector added.
It is to be noted that stray dogs pose a serious problem to the Kulob region of the southern Khatlon province. Thus, Radio liberty’s Tajik Service reported last July that local authorities in the Kulob region have issued a ban on any family having more than one dog. The authorities noted that some families have three or four dogs and, when one grows old, they put it out on the streets. To keep down the number of stray dogs, the Kulob municipal council has exterminated more than 1,000 canine strays over the past 18 months, RFE/RL reported in July 2011.
