Karachi: Even as Pakistan’s polio workers continue to operate under the long shadow of militant violence, stray dogs have emerged as another serious and largely unaddressed threat to frontline vaccinators and the police personnel guarding them, with dozens of workers, mostly women, bitten or mauled during each national and provincial immunisation campaign across the country.
Health officials and hospital data show that incidents of dog bites rise sharply during polio drives, when thousands of female workers fan out into neighbourhoods and informal settlements on foot. Many of these workers say they fear stray dogs as much as security threats, noting that women, often clad in abayas, veils or burqas, find it difficult to run when attacked, making them easy targets.
On Saturday, two such incidents were reported in Karachi. A female polio worker was bitten by a stray dog during door-to-door vaccination in Zaman Town, Korangi, and was shifted to Indus Hospital, where she received anti-rabies vaccination. Later the same day, a 21-year-old police official deployed on polio duty was bitten by a dog in the Qaidabad area and taken to the same hospital for treatment.
Aftab Gohar, In-charge of the Dog Bite Clinic at Indus Hospital, said the police official had sustained a second-degree wound and was immediately administered post-exposure prophylaxis. He said the hospital routinely sees a spike in such cases whenever polio campaigns begin. “Two to three polio workers were brought to Indus Hospital last month alone after dog bites. This is not new. Every campaign, we receive similar cases,” he told Vital News.
Polio programme officials confirmed that the injured volunteer has been advised bed rest, adding that similar incidents were reported during previous campaigns, including one in October last year when another female worker was attacked by a stray dog during field work.
While the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme provides financial compensation to workers injured during duty, it does not have a dedicated mechanism to protect vaccinators from stray dogs. Officials say they often have to seek ad hoc support from district health authorities to arrange rabies vaccination and treatment for bitten workers.
An official in the Islamabad district health office said the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) regularly asks district teams to facilitate post-exposure treatment for polio workers attacked by dogs, as the polio programme itself has no separate preventive or protection framework for such incidents.
Officials also acknowledged that the programme does not maintain comprehensive, centralised data on the number of polio workers mauled or bitten by stray dogs during each national or provincial campaign, despite the recurring nature of the problem.
Medical experts warn that rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure vaccination is delayed or incomplete, underscoring the risks faced by field staff who are often bitten while working in congested neighbourhoods with limited access to immediate medical care.
Government hospital data show that more than 4,000 dog bite cases were reported in Karachi within a single month recently, while at least two rabies-related deaths have been recorded in Sindh so far this year.
Public health experts say the growing threat from stray dogs highlights a blind spot in polio campaign planning, which has largely focused on security against militant attacks but has paid little attention to everyday hazards faced by workers in the field. They argue that without coordinated and humane stray dog population management by municipal authorities, along with basic protective measures for vaccinators, such incidents will continue to disrupt campaigns and put already vulnerable frontline workers at risk.
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