Dog bite cases in Gujarat have been on an ascent in the beyond three years with more individuals calling the rescue vehicle administration for crisis transport to hospitals.Information from the GVK-EMRI emergency vehicle administration records shows that they took care of a sum of 4,343 instances of canine nibbles in 2019, which expanded to 5,557 of every 2020, an ascent of 27%.
Worryingly, in the first nine months of 2021, the number has already touched 5,722 cases, more than the cases reported in entire 2020.
Officials said that if this trend continues, the ambulance service will have attended to a projected number of 7,629 dog bite cases by the end of December 2021 — a 37% increase over the previous year.
Notably, the districts with the highest number of cases over the last four years are Ahmedabad with 1,607, followed by Surat with 1,448, Rajkot 992, Vadodara 963 and Porbandar with 842 cases.
Cases going down in Ahmedabad
From October 6, 2017, to September 29, 2021, Ahmedabad reported the highest number of dog bite cases in the state with a total of 1,607.
Most recently, there were 32 cases in the last three months of 2017, a total of 360 in 2018, further rising to 452 cases in 2019, which rose marginally to 466 cases in 2020. However, only 297 patients have been attended to in the nine months of 2021.
Districts with the lowest number of cases in the past four years were the Dangs with just six reported cases, Chhota Udepur with 30, Valsad with 135, Mahisagar with 139 and Narmada with 149 cases.
At present there are 37 GVK-EMRI Karuna Animal Ambulances working across the state. The state government added 10 MVD (Mobile Veterinary Dispensary) project to the GVK force on PPP model in June last year taking the total number of MVDs operating in 4,495 villages of Gujarat to 447.
