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Bali Street Dogs ( B A W A)


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Just an interesting read worth sharing

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/03...rrior-dogs.html

Janice Girardi: Trusting in warrior dogs

Trisha Sertori , Contributor , Ubud | Mon, 03/29/2010 8:32 AM

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At a fit 57 years of age, Bali-based jeweler and animal rights activist, Janice Girardi, speaks at a hundred miles an hour; she does everything at a break neck pace.

“People are always at me to slow down, to calm down, but I am relaxed, it’s just if I am doing something I am doing it,” says Janice who spent 16 years in India studying the rigorous silent meditation of Vipasanna. “That was enough silence,” Girardi quips.

“Friends say to take time for myself, which is what I am doing with dog welfare and the [jewelry] business,” says Girardi who several years ago founded the Bali Animal Welfare Association (BAWA), an animal protection and adoption center in Ubud, Bali.

BAWA, with funding from the Bali Street Dogs Fund, Australia and other donators, has for many years nursed Bali’s street dogs, finding them seriously ill or injured, restoring them to health and finding caring homes.

The outbreak of rabies on the tourist island in November 2008 threw Girardi into the vortex of what has become an epidemic. As of this month, more than 40 people have died of rabies in Bali.

Girardi found herself, through BAWA, battling the disease that is lethal for animals and humans on several fronts, like a firefighter in the midst of a maelstrom. On one hand was a government policy of culling dogs and vaccinating others with a short acting vaccine, on the other were hospitals short of human vaccine and often without the lifesaving immunoglobulin essential to save lives in Category 3 bites from rabid dogs.

Added to this was the many constraints on government, which Girardi says is doing its best under very difficult conditions.

Addressing these issues, Girardi learned fast and furiously how best to battle the disease in a humane way. She recently hosted an international conference on rabies with the world’s best rabies scientists and last week concluded a second rabies conference, jointly funded by Ausaid and ACIER, attended by Bali’s government members and international scientists offering world best practice rabies epidemic control. And it is an epidemic, according to PhD in rabies control, Darryn Knobel.

“Following the three day conference we see a new sense of optimism that, with a far reaching vaccination program, under the new provincial head of animal husbandry, Putu Sumantra, Bali can be rabies free by 2012. BAWA and WSPA are committed to assisting the government to achieve this,” says Girardi.

She adds the most efficient and successful control of rabies is vaccination of at least 70 percent of the dog population. BAWA in tandem with the World Society for the Protection of Animals, (WSPA), is currently running a vaccination pilot program across the Gianyar Regency to establish hard evidence that vaccination can eradicate rabies.

“From the conference last week we see the government is keen to re-focus on vaccinations rather than culling,” says Girardi.

Girardi’s five BAWA teams are daily vaccinating 600 dogs, working outwards in rings to create rabies free zones in Gianyar. Since December 2009 more than 20,000 dogs have been vaccinated over a wide radius of the regency, with 40,000 dogs expected to be vaccinated by June this year with the long term imported vaccine that does not fail, unlike the local vaccine that is proving to be unstable.

She is deeply concerned that the government, until very recently, believed mass culling of dogs, using strychnine, would halt the epidemic; all evidence to date in Bali is to the contrary with the disease now causing human deaths across the island after its first occurrence in Nusa Dua.

“The government was mass culling, which everyone in the world says does not work … and does not stop rabies. We have the vaccines, we have the money donated by Ausaid, we have enough vaccine to vaccinate every dog in Bali three times over with the long lasting imported vaccine,” says Girardi of what she and scientists say is the single most effective response to rabies epidemics.

Scientists explain that vaccinated dogs create a barrier – “warrior dogs” Girardi suggests, that prevent rabid dogs moving into an area. Essentially every vaccinated dog blocks the transfer of rabies.

Non-vaccinated dogs are classified as potential rabies “reservoirs”.

“A rabid dog will keep moving around until it finds a susceptible dog. Vaccinating dogs forms a barrier from incursion into that area. All empirical evidence is that culling does not work and this is one theory of why it doesn’t work,” explains Knobel.

According to Girardi, the other weapon in the fight against rabies is education. BAWA goes daily into schools across Bali teaching children how to care for their dogs and about bite prevention.

“These kids know exactly what to do and how to avoid being bitten. We have a game called Bali Idol Dogs and the kids win prizes. We ask what do you do if you get bitten? They answer ‘scrub the wound with soap and water for 20 minutes’ and they win a prize,” says Girardi.

She cites a recent severe dog bite case of a Japanese tourist who was attacked by a rottweiler.

“He was told by a nurse he would not need the vaccine and immunoglobulin because it was a rottweiler, not a Bali dog. That is the sort ignorance that costs lives,” says Girardi stressing every unprovoked dog bite “needs to be treated as a potentially of death situation”.

BAWA has established a hotline for bite victims and BAWA’s trained personal will collect suspect dogs and advise people how to get immediate medical assistance.

However life saving medicines for rabies is too frequently unavailable. BAWA’s daily check of vaccine and immunoglobulin stocks across Bali’s hospitals shows a chronic shortage of the immunoglobulin and frequent shortages of the lifesaving vaccine.

Girardi points out the World Health Organization (WHO) says anyone with a Category 3 bite (a bite that breaks skin) from a rabies suspected dog needs immunoglobulin and the vaccine immediately, at thousands of dollars in costs. When impoverished children are bitten their immunoglobulin shots are paid for “by raising the funds or out of my pocket”, says Girardi.

Vaccination of dogs costs around US$2.30 or around Rp 25,000 with the long lasting imported vaccine.

“It’s much cheaper to vaccinate dogs than vaccinating people forever. The government says there are too many dogs to vaccinate. My little BAWA team vaccinates an average of 600 dogs every day — we have vaccinated 20,000 dogs since December, so if little old jewelry business Janice can do this, so can the government. Put the needles in the dogs!,” says Girardi who, for the past 14 months has spent most of her waking hours coming to grips with rabies and how to protect the street dogs she has grown to love over the past 28 years.

“My first Bali dog was a little white Kintamani puppy being sold. He was in a cage in the sun. I didn’t want a dog, but I could not leave him there. The seller wanted one hundred dollars. A fortune. I offered him a dollar. He said he cuts off dog’s tails and sells those for a dollar.

“We agreed on 10 dollars. I had that dog for 16 years and have been caring for street dogs ever since,” says Girardi of her compassion for Bali’s dogs that are all too often starving, mange infected and abused, and now with a rabies epidemic threatening locals and tourists alike, culled rather than cared for.

The answer to rabies and animal abuse says Girardi is better care of dogs. “The main problem is that getting rid of dogs won’t work because culturally the Balinese have dogs — you kill their dog and they are going to go and get another one from places like Denpasar that has rabies,” says Girardi.

Edited by Powerlegs
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