In a stark warning, public health experts are raising alarms over recent judicial pushes for the mass confinement of India's community dogs into shelters. Dr. Chandrakant Pandav, a Padma Shri awardee and former head of Community Health at AIIMS, argues that such a move is not just impractical but constitutes a grave public health risk, flying in the face of established science and epidemiology.
The Illusion of Safety and a Logistical Nightmare
The idea that diseases like rabies can be contained by simply rounding up and hiding away street dogs is a dangerous illusion, according to Dr. Pandav. History and basic science indicate the opposite is true. India is considering an unprecedented experiment on a scale never attempted globally: the mass confinement of millions of free-roaming canines.
This approach faces an immediate and insurmountable hurdle: infrastructure. The required shelters, numbering in the thousands, simply do not exist. They would need permanent facilities with trained staff, isolation wards, robust waste management, continuous veterinary care, and sustainable funding. Once confined, the responsibility for an animal's food, water, sanitation, and healthcare becomes a lifelong, costly obligation, for which there is currently no national plan or budget.
Confinement: An Epidemiological Amplifier, Not a Solution
Even if shelters could be built, a more critical question emerges: what happens to disease inside them? Rabies, the primary justification for removal, is notoriously difficult to detect early. No reliable field test can identify an infected but asymptomatic dog at intake.
An apparently healthy dog incubating the virus can be placed in close confinement with others. In such crowded, stressful conditions, shelters transform from safe havens into disease amplifiers. Suppressed immunity and increased contact dramatically raise the risk of rabies transmission through saliva. This is a proven recipe for outbreaks, not containment.
Human Risk is Multiplied, Not Eliminated
Shelters are not airtight bubbles. Workers, vets, cleaners, and visitors move in and out daily, creating numerous potential exposure pathways. Since rabies symptoms are delayed, detection often occurs only after the virus has already spread. Confinement multiplies high-risk contact points instead of eliminating them. This concern extends beyond rabies to other zoonotic diseases that thrive in overcrowded, stressful environments with poor biosecurity.
This approach directly contradicts the globally endorsed One Health framework, which recognizes the inseparable link between human, animal, and environmental health. Policies that compromise animal welfare inevitably jeopardize public health.
The Proven Path: Vaccination, Sterilisation, and Community Management
Countries that have successfully controlled rabies did not achieve it through mass removal. They relied on evidence-based strategies:
- Mass vaccination to achieve and sustain at least 70% coverage.
- Sterilisation to humanely manage and stabilise dog populations over time.
- Community management, allowing vaccinated, sterilised dogs to remain in their territories as a biological barrier against unvaccinated newcomers.
Removing these community dogs creates a dangerous vacuum, quickly filled by new, unvaccinated animals, thereby increasing risk. Vaccinated and sterilised dogs in the open can be monitored, and disease trends can be tracked for targeted intervention. Confinement, in contrast, hides risks until they erupt.
The choice for India is clear, argues Dr. Pandav. It can either strengthen proven, scientific strategies or embark on a high-risk experiment that concentrates disease, creates new exposure pathways, and undermines long-term control. Public health must be guided by evidence and prevention, not fear or optics. Mistaking confinement for containment could come at a cost far higher than anticipated.
