Dog bites

[Guest guest]

>please suggest something wherein we dont have 25000 cases of dog

>bites in a city alone in a year.

 

Raw data is only half of a statistic. The other half is context.

 

Suppose there are 25,000 dog bites per year in Bangalore.

 

About five years ago I discovered by comparing Indian & U.S.

public health records that our ratios of dog bites requiring hospital

treatment were identical, at 1 per 63 humans per year.

 

That was an astounding discovery, because in India almost

all dogs run free, with thousands of opportunities to bite people

every day. Further, India is a rabies-endemic nation, where any

dog bite that breaks the skin requires hospital treatment.

 

In the U.S., almost all dogs are confined, rarely

encountering unfamiliar people, and rabies is so rare that the

number of human cases per year can be counted on the fingers of one

hand.

 

Unfortunately, many of our dogs are very poorly socialized,

through lack of frequent proximity to strangers, and many of our

dogs are abnormally reactive. About 5% of the dogs in the U.S. are

pit bull terriers and their close mixes, who are responsible for

approximately half of the actuarial risk associated with all dogs.

About 1% are Rottweilers, who are statistically even more dangerous,

being responsible for nearly 25% of the actuarial risk from all dogs.

 

Projecting the figure of 1 bite requiring hospital treatment

per 63 humans to the present population of Bangalore, about six

million, one finds that the expected number of dog bites requiring

hospital treatment each year should be 95,238.

 

Somehow Bangalore is managing to be 70,000 dog bites per year

below the Indian and U.S. norms .

 

There are two ways to look at this. One is that you need to

recruit a whole lot more dangerous dogs, to get up to quota. There

are plenty of pit bull and Rottweiler breeders in the U.S. who would

cheerfully assist.

 

The other is to realize that regardless of whatever any

statistical illiterate or hydrophobic fear mongers may make of the

25,000 dog bites per year occurring in Bangalore, it is actually

such an impressively low number as to testify most eloquently for the

preventive success of the Bangalore ABC programs.

 

There is, by the way, a further statistical consideration

to introduce in comparing the U.S. and Indian dog bite data. The

U.S. presently has about 70 million dogs, or one per 4.3 humans.

India, according to the World Health Organization, now has 26

million dogs, or one per 42.3 humans.

 

This in itself indicates the remarkable success of the ABC

programs, nationwide, because as recently as 1997 the apparent

Indian dogs to humans ratio was 1 to 10, and this ratio can still be

seen in many places where ABC programs are not operating. Where ABC

is successful, there are now as many as 160 humans per dog.

 

In other words, the U.S. has 10 times as many dogs relative

to humans as India--which suggests that if exposure opportunities

were equal, and if the risk of rabies in both nations also happened

to be equal, the U.S. should have 10 times as many bites per capita

requiring hospital treatment.

 

There is actually a way we can do that comparison: we can

subtract out of the Indian total the number of bites in which the

sole reason for hospital treatment is the need to receive

post-exposure anti-rabies vaccination.

 

Since this is apparently well over 90% of all the bites

reported to Indian hospitals, the U.S. apparently does have at least

10 times as many dog attacks per capita doing actual bodily injury.

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

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Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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