Hyderabad: Telangana was listed eighth in a report regarding dog bite cases in 2022 submitted by the ministry of state for health and family welfare minister Bharati Pravin Pawar in Lok Sabha.
According to Pawar, Telangana recorded 80,281 dog bite cases in 2022, an increase from 24,000 in 2014, a three-fold rise.
However, officials from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) veterinary wing said that pandemic years should be disregarded as fewer human-animal conflict cases were reported due to the COVID-19 restrictions. They further mentioned 65% of Hyderabad’s stray dogs have been sterilised under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme.
According to a report by the Times of India (TOI), a senior GHMC was quoted as, “Usually urban congested areas have more stays and since GHMC, Warangal and Nizamabad together account for 70% of the urban municipal areas, we are seeing a decline in the cases. GHMC is conducting sterilisation on a mass scale leading to reduced aggressive behaviour, thus reduced dog bite cases.”
Maharashtra recorded the highest number of cases with 3.4 lakhs, followed by Tamil Naidu at 3.3 lakh cases, Andhra Pradesh at 1.69 lakh cases, Uttarakhand at 1.62 lakh cases, Karnataka at 1.46 lakh cases, Gujarat at 1.44 lakh cases and Bihar at 1.1 lakh cases.
