Ahmedabad police inspector dies of rabies after being scratched by pet dog
Vanraj Manjaria, a police inspector posted at the Ahmedabad City Police Control Room, contracted the virus after he was scratched by his pet dog.
A police official from Gujarat lost his life after he contracted rabies following a scratch by pet dog.
Vanraj Manjaria, a police inspector posted at the Ahmedabad City Police Control Room, contracted the virus after he was scratched by his pet dog, India Today reported.
The police official, however, didn't take any precautions as it it widely believed that rabies is caused by dog bite and not a scratch.
When he got himself tested, the result came positive for rabies. He was immediately hospitalised for treatment, however, he succumbed to the infection, the report said.
The incident comes over a month after a six-year-old girl died due to rabies, sparking an outrage in Delhi's Rohini. In a similar incident, a four-year-old girl from Karnataka's Davanagere who had been battling for life for nearly four months after a brutal stray dog attack reportedly succumbed to rabies in a Bengaluru hospital, according to a report in The Times of India.
Recently several states have issued guidelines regarding the management of stray dogs and curbing rabies infection.
The Delhi Department of Urban Development recently ordered the management of street dog population, eradicating rabies, and reducing human-dog conflict in the city.
Rabies cases in India
India accounts for one in three rabies deaths globally and over two-thirds in Asia.
According to WHO data, there are an estimated 18,000-20,000 deaths from rabies each year in India, HT earlier reported.
Reported human rabies cases in India have fallen by nearly 75 per cent over the past two decades, from 274 in 2005 to 34 in 2022, largely due to mass dog vaccination and improved post-exposure prophylaxis, read another report by news agency PTI.
