By Ruth Steinberger
Photos by Fabiola Alvarez
Rabies kills tens of thousands of people in impoverished nations each year. While many people may be surprised by the fact that people die of rabies today, most are shocked to learn that dogs are the vectors in over 95 percent of rabies cases in humans.
A family pet visits the spay neuter clinic in Colima in 2011. Volunteers who gather donated supplies hold clinics as often as possible but the numbers are too great to even make a dent without the help of a sterilent for female dogs.
According to the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (GARC), an estimated 375 million homeless dogs exist worldwide—three quarters of all dogs born. Over 80 percent of unwanted dogs are born in nations in which animals are not protected under the law and where rabies is a genuine human health threat. Official methods for killing dogs in rabies-plagued nations include clubbing, electrocution, poisoning, drowning and intentional starvation.
People waiting near the check-in for the spay neuter clinic, Colima, 2011. Living in poverty there is little money to care for the dogs. Most public facilities in Mexico are operated as "anti-rabicos" meaning they collect the dogs as a prevention against rabies. Most anti-rabicos kill the dogs by electrocution.
Indeed, on a worldwide scale, more dogs are killed by electrocution, clubbing and poisoning than by humane injection; fear of rabies is the number one reason for these aggressive killing programs. The good news, however, is that a vaccine which could, at once, prevent rabies and pregnancy in dogs may be on the horizon, and GARC is embarking on a campaign to raise the funds to begin the testing of this vaccine in dogs. To begin, at least $150,000 must be raised to move forward.
Researchers, Dr. Xianfu Wu and Dr. Charles Rupprecht, of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC), have developed a rabies vaccine with an embedded immunocontraceptive target, which has prevented litters in 80 percent of vaccinated female mice. The vaccine would require a commercial partner and must be approved by regulatory authorities. If this combined rabies/ contraceptive vaccine is determined to be effective in preventing dogs from becoming pregnant, it could revolutionize animal welfare while also preventing and eliminating rabies in developing nations, effectively ending the worst horrors facing unwanted dogs in numbers that are impossible by any other means. The average life of a street dog is just two years. Preventing unwanted litters by sterilizing owned females obviously halts the main source of street dogs.
Boys on tribal lands in the US play safely with a dog that has been spayed and vaccinated against rabies.
By piggybacking on rabies vaccination programs, this vaccine could provide population control in places where high-volume surgical sterilization for dogs and cats is still decades away, or even in places where dogs and cats are viewed as vermin and providing medical care to them may not be considered valuable.
“Although most developing nations lack animal welfare facilities, such as shelters, much less having spay/neuter programs, many do have rabies control programs,” says Esther Mechler, originator of Spay USA and founder of Marian’s Dream, an animal welfare foundation. Mechler points out that the rabies component could dramatically increase the number of public agencies willing and able to administer the product, essentially taking some of the burden off of the animal welfare community while increasing efficiency in animal welfare efforts.
In addition to being unconscionably cruel, collecting and killing stray dogs is generally ineffective at stopping the disease because whether or not owned dogs are vaccinated, intact females have litters which replenish the numbers of potential rabies vectors each year. The outcome is not simply theoretical; rabies produces a violent death as the central nervous system is destroyed by the virus, and, tragically, 40 percent of those who die of rabies are children. Mechler says, “It’s exciting that this [CDC] team is working on solving these two serious problems together and will be helping the people and the animals both with this one product.”
Prevention is the only alternative to collecting and killing, and where there are free-roaming animals, the efforts must focus on females. Male animals are often cited as having a theoretical number of potential offspring which is quite high. However, sterilizing male animals has no effect on whether or not the females go into estrus and attract males from afar.
Currently, the research is on hold due to the lack of funding; therefore, GARC’s fundraising efforts are starting immediately. “Finding a feasible answer to humanely reduce the dog population is probably the single most important missing tool in the battle to reduce the burden of rabies across the globe,” Professor Deborah Briggs, executive director of Global Alliance for Rabies Control, says.
Kids hold their cats in pillow cases waiting for them to be spayed.
“Supporting research on the development of an immunocontraceptive could save millions of dogs from being slaughtered in the name of rabies control and revolutionize rabies control strategies.”
Every month, hundreds of cats, dogs and other animals are brought in to the Tulsa Animal Welfare Shelter. Ideally, they are adopted, rescued, fostered or returned to their owners. But reality – and the fate of the majority – is nowhere near ideal. In September, of the 656 dogs brought in, 418 were euthanized.
“The audit of the shelter in 2007 recommended all kinds of things,” Jenkins says, “from ways of conducting euthanasia to redoing the floors. We implemented everything in the study that we could afford. Looking at our budget of 1.8 million per year, it is down from 2.2 million when I started. We would love to do more fostering than we do, but to do it right is a full time job. We mostly foster very young puppies and kittens. We don’t participate in a lot of events. The animals have to be in the shelter to be reclaimed. You can’t take them home in a foster situation and still have them shown for adoption. It is better for puppies to be fostered than dogs waiting to be reclaimed. Again not all recommendations have happened because we can’t afford it. We have an $8 million facility in the long-term (5 year) plan. It consists of renovation and expansion of the existing facility as we are always full.” While the partnership is not finalized, Jenkins remains focused on the task at hand of reducing shelter – and ultimately, euthanization – numbers. She is currently working on implementing two programs, the first of which is for feral cats. She is pursuing a trap, neuter release program, along with a feral cat database. The second program will be a targeted spay/ neuter program for Pit Bulls, who make up 30 to 40 percent of shelter animals.
