Rabies is a virus that spreads by saliva from an infected dog entering a wound in the skin, usually during a dog bite.
The virus travels along the nervous system to the brain where it starts to destroy the brain and results in a very unpleasant death – for dogs and humans.
1 person in India dies of rabies every hour, 1 child dies every second hour.
It has been shown that the only way to control human rabies deaths is to control rabies in the pet and street dog population. Culling street dogs does not work. The only way to control the street dog population is to desex street dogs and vaccinate them against rabies, this will create a safe , stable dog population.
It is this work that SARAH with help from VBB has been doing and has made Sikkim a Rabies free state.
It is an honour that by using our veterinary skills that we can improve the lives of both the animals and people of Sikkim and India.
The photo is of the main surgery at the SARAH teams base hospital in Gangtok.
