(CN) 20,000 dogs killed in Hanzhong

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China kills 20,000 dogs to combat rabies

06/02/2009

 

BEIJING — Authorities in northern China killed more than 20,000 dogs to quell a

rabies outbreak, a local official and state media said Tuesday.

 

Eight people have died from rabies since March in Hanzhong city in Shaanxi

province, with another two suspected cases in the hospital, the official Xinhua

News Agency reported.

 

Rabies outbreaks and dog-killing campaigns are common in China, with more 2,000

people dying every year after being bitten by rabid dogs.

 

Rabies has spread to 11 counties, and more than 5,000 people have been bitten or

scratched by dogs since March, the head of the Hanzhong agricultural bureau, Qin

Mingxian, was quoted as saying. It was not clear if all the dogs were rabid.

 

Xinhua said government teams under the direction of the police killed dogs in

areas of the outbreak, including wild dogs and dogs in public spaces such as

schools and parks.

 

Unregistered dogs were killed on the spot, said Ye Zhoujun of the news

department of the Hanzhong propaganda office.

 

" People must register their dogs and vaccinate them, " he said. - AP

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Thousands of dogs killed..

By Shan Juan

China Daily

2009-06-02

 

Bai Lihe is not getting much sleep these days, even though her village no longer

reverberates to the nocturnal sounds of 300 local dogs that were killed in a bid

to combat rabies.

 

Instead, Bai lies awake thinking about Doudou, the dog who shared her life for

the past eight years.

 

Doudou was out in the neighborhood a week ago and never came home, said Bai, a

55-year-old housewife from Xiayishui village, Yangxian county, Hanzhong, in

northwest Shaanxi province.

 

She learned later from neighbors that Doudou was clubbed to death by local

officials who believed he was a stray.

 

Xiayishui village is taking part in a campaign in Hanzhong that has seen more

than 20,000 dogs -- mostly strays -- killed to curb the spread of rabies, a

disease that has claimed eight human lives in the past two and a half months.

 

" Doudou was small and never bit, " Bai told China Daily Tuesday. " I just

vaccinated him against rabies and they still clubbed him to death. "

 

A few doors away, Bai Xinpeng, 26, was doing all he could to make sure the same

fate did not befall his three dogs.

 

" I can only keep them all in my bedroom and lock my home all the time, " he said.

" They've been killing dogs for quite a while and I've no idea when this will be

finished but I'll protect them as long as possible. Now it's hard to spot a dog

in our village where there used to be nearly 400 dogs. "

 

Dang Zhengqing, Party Secretary of Yangxian county, insisted the killing was

necessary.

 

" The culling, targeting only wild and stray dogs, was over Tuesday and people

are safer now from the epidemic. "

 

However, some locals complained that officials went door-to-door killing dogs.

 

" I understand the public anger but we don't kill owned dogs on leash, " he

insisted. " The culling is extreme but necessary to combat the deadly epidemic.

All lives are equally important but we decided to sacrifice dogs for human

health. "

 

Local authorities are entitled under the law to take such action to contain

epidemics.

 

Rabies had hit the area hard, said Dang.

 

However, some medical experts disagreed with the action.

 

Tan Xiaodong, a public health professor at Wuhan University, said there was no

justification for the killings.

 

" In addition to dogs, animals including cats and bats can also cause rabies.

It's impossible to kill them all. "

 

" To eradicate the lethal disease, what is needed is long-term proper management

and oversight over dog keeping. "

 

Dang said there were other measures in place to curtail rabies including free

rabies vaccinations and registration for all 24,000 dogs left in the county.

 

" Free chains will be distributed to dog owners to keep their pets on leash, " he

added.

 

The efforts are paying off, he said. Since May 7, when the war on rabies

started, the number of dog-biting cases decreased dramatically.

 

A great many dogs in rural areas are neither registered, nor vaccinated.

 

" We are trying to raise public awareness about safe dog-keeping, " Dang said.

 

At the city level, the government in Hanzhong is urging people to have their

pets vaccinated and more than 240,000 had done so by the end of May, said Qin

Mingxian, director of the Hanzhong agriculture bureau.

 

" The vaccination work is still going on and the goal is to vaccinate all of the

370,000 dogs in the city, " he said.

 

Since May 23, the local government carried out a citywide anti-rabies drive

focusing on prevention, immunization and dog-killing.

 

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-06/02/content_7965339.htm

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Video:

ku6.com

 

[Translation]

 

The Shanxi Province Hanzhong local area explodes rabies, therefore the

government take this as an excuse, kills whole city 8 county area all dogs class

comprehensively, take injects the rabies vaccine as the reason, the collection

raises the dog household material, visits to kill, clubs randomly dies, already

surpassed row of only the so-called killing wild dog sickness dog. The behavior

extreme is bad, causes the local society enormous disaffection.

 

http://v.ku6.com/special/index_3596089.html