China's pet dogs spur rabies surge
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More and more Chinese are choosing to keep dogs as pets.
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BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Rabies cases have leapt nearly 63 percent in China in the first nine months of the year as the people's mad affair with pet dogs deepened, the China Daily reports.
Rabies, "mad dog disease" in Chinese, killed 1,297 people up to the end of September, far exceeding the 1,003 deaths the Health Ministry reported for all of 2002, the newspaper said.
This is the fifth straight year that China has seen a big jump in rabies infections.
"Experts from the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention are blaming the trend in pet ownership, the shaky quality of vaccinations, the public's weak awareness of vigilance and the low vaccination rate among the dogs as the major causes of the rapid rise in cases," the newspaper said.
Another factor was stray dogs running wild on the outskirts of cities and in rural areas.
The ministry said earlier this year that rabies was the most deadly infectious killer in China, well surpassing SARS and AIDS.
Pet dogs were shunned in the days of Mao Zedong as a symbol of bourgeois decadence and dog is still a popular restaurant dish. But pet pooches have become increasingly popular in the last decade with improved living standards.
Below the rabies article, the China Daily reported the "First Famous Dog Auction" in Shanghai in which one dog, whose picture graced the page, sold for the equivalent of $370.
Fourteen other "expensive" dogs up for grabs failed to find buyers, the newspaper said. It did not elaborate.
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
