The recent decision to cull stray dogs in the states of Penang, Perlis and Kedah, following three isolated cases of rabies in dogs, has been met with outrage and vehement objections from the general public of Malaysia, not to mention the onslaught of international criticism that Malaysia has drawn. This is a knee jerk reaction and it is not an effective solution to eradication of rabies or prevention of future rabies outbreak. The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) protocol for eradicating rabies is through vaccination programs. WHO do not advocate mass killing of dogs because this only increases the risk of rabies transmission. Culling makes dogs run away out of fear and they tend to react very aggressively towards humans from feeling threatened. If a dog was actually rabid, this only serves to increase the risk of transmission to other areas, which then poses a higher risk to public health and safety. To make matters worse, it has been confirmed that the dog catchers in Penang are not vaccinated against rabies, which is not only in violation of WHO standards, but also highly risky in actually promoting the spread of rabies.

Between the years of 1997-2001, mass culling of dogs was carried out in Flores, Indonesia, where a staggering number of 300,000 dogs were killed. Today, rabies is still an existing risk in Flores.

There was a rabies outbreak in New York city in 1945, and they adopted mass culling, which again was ineffective in controlling and eradicating rabies. Eventually, New York was and is rabies free till now after they adopted vaccination programs. The same goes for countries like Korea, Denmark and Israel, that are all rabies free today due to their implementation of vaccination programs in the past.  

No screening is being done on the dogs here before they are being brutally killed, and to date, only 1.8% of the dogs that have been killed have tested positive for rabies. Contrary to popular and misleading belief, rabies is not a disease that is just found in dogs, but it can also occur in rats, bats, cats, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, etc. This exercise of mass culling of dogs, is thus, far from effective in controlling and preventing future outbreak of rabies.

Recently, a fully sponsored mass vaccination programmed was proposed by Worldwide Veterinary Services (WVS), which has received no approval from our government yet. WVS have confirmed that they can deliver 50,000 vaccines by the 28th of October 2015.  They are willing to walk the talk and they just need the green light from our Federal government to come in and start this mass vaccination program. Dr. Luke Gamble from WVS met with Penang Chief Minister Mr. Lim Guan Eng and other relevant officials from Malaysia on the 29th of September 2015, where the Chief Minister agreed to allow the WVS to vaccinate the stray dogs in an effort to control and prevent future outbreak of rabies. The Senior Chief Assistant Director to the Department of Veterinary Science, Dr. Rozanah Asmah Abd Samad, has said that the approval for vaccination to commence can be given within a month although it usually takes up to three months. The Penang Chief Minister, although agreeable, has stated that the culling will continue in the meantime.

This petition is to ask the Federal government, The Federal Department of Veterinary Science, and the Ministry of Agriculture to take a unanimous stand in this matter and expedite the release of a permit for WVS to enter Malaysia and start their fully sponsored vaccination program. Please understand there is an urgency to the situation as innocent lives are being lost everyday. This is the first step that will kickstart Malaysia’s journey towards becoming a rabies free nation.