Mass dog vaccination and animal birth control : a one health pilot project in Karachi, Pakistan

The Sindh province in Southern Pakistan reports staggering numbers of dog bites. Not only to treat but to prevent, dog-bite casualties, in January 2018, the Indus Hospital launched a proof of concept of One Health. The pilot project ‘Rabies Free Pakistan’ (RFP) consisted of the performance of mass dog vaccination (MDV) and animal birth control (ABC) in a fishing village near the hospital. The initial team included a physician, an epidemiologist and some research assistants, but it soon expanded to veterinarians, members of the civil society and the city municipality, and received support from the World Health Organization (WHO). This project, in which MDV and ABC were performed programmatically for the first time in Pakistan, demonstrated that MDV and ABC are technically feasible if the political will is secured. RFP is now sharing the lessons learnt with decision-makers in other Pakistani provinces to ensure the scaling up of this approach.