Delhi's stray dog crisis demands a One Health response

The Hindu

14 hours ago

Delhi is once again at war with its dogs. The Supreme Court's recent order to remove stray dogs has reignited a long-running debate. The fear driving it is, of course, real. The city is home to nearly a million strays, dog bite cases surged almost 277% between 2022 and 2024, and January 2025 alone saw a 52 percent spike over the previous year's monthly average. Yet the Court's response is less a cure than a reflex, aimed at symptoms rather than causes. This is where the One Health framework becomes critical – as it recognises human, animal and ecological health are deeply interconnected and that only integrated solutions can deliver real safety. The Covid-19 pandemic should have made that lesson unmissable.
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Understanding the crisis
Rabies is a zoonotic disease that passes between animals and humans, and it thrives in urban systems like Delhi. The city generates more than 11,000 tonnes of solid waste every day, nearly half of which is mismanaged. These open garbage heaps are permanent food sources for dogs, allowing their numbers to persist regardless of how many are caught or removed.
The 'catch and kill' method, introduced by the British in the 19th century and heavily used after Independence, proved disastrous. A Municipal Corporation of Delhi study from 1980 to 1990 found that despite slaughtering 8 lakh dogs over the decade, the city's stray population remained at 1.5 lakh. By 1993, authorities admitted the approach had failed, as rabies deaths had risen and the dog population continued to grow.
The problem lies in the city's disrupted urban ecology, where unmanaged waste sustains multiple disease-carrying scavengers and the sudden removal of dogs destabilises the system further. When dogs are displaced, other scavengers like rodents, pigs or monkeys, move in to occupy the same ecological niche. Rodent populations in particular thrive on unmanaged waste and are reservoirs of diseases such as leptospirosis. Any strategy that ignores these connections risks replacing one public health crisis with another.
These ecological vulnerabilities are compounded by gaps in human health systems. Post-exposure treatment can prevent almost all deaths, yet access remains patchy. Clinics often lack vaccines and immunoglobulin, epidemiological and laboratory surveillance is limited, healthcare professionals receive inadequate training, community awareness is low, and coordination across sectors is weak. Therefore, the issue moves far beyond dogs.
India's own Animal Birth Control Rules, updated in 2023, require sterilisation, vaccination and release precisely to avoid these outcomes. The Supreme Court's directive cuts against this, undermines years of legal reform, and risks exposing India again to the charge of cruelty.
One Health approach
Viewed through the One Health lens, Delhi's challenge is not a choice between humans or dogs, but how the city manages the interconnected systems that affect both. Waste management shapes the conditions in which rabies spreads, dog vaccination protects both animals and humans, and post-bite treatment saves lives.
None of these measures can succeed in isolation, and climate change intensifies the stakes. Rising temperatures and erratic rainfall alter waste decomposition, influence rodent populations, and affect dog behaviour, making fragile urban ecosystems even more unstable. Treating dog removal as a technical fix ignores the reality that the most serious health risks in the coming decades will emerge where human, animal, and environmental health intersect, and a One Health approach emerges as the pathway to tackle them effectively.
There is also mounting evidence from India itself that large scale vaccinations can rapidly lower exposure even before sterilisation programmes achieve scale.
Goa became India's first state to eliminate human dog-mediated rabies through a programme that combined mass dog vaccination, public education, and surveillance. Vaccinating each dog in India costs a mean of U.S. $3.45, slightly above the global average of U.S. $2.18 due to labour-intensive methods like hand-catching strays - yet, over 10 years, the programme prevented 121 human deaths and 3,427 DALYs (disability-adjusted life years, which measure years of healthy life lost due to illness or premature death) at just U.S. $567 per DALY, making it a highly cost-effective public health intervention.
Jaipur's two-decade programme of sterilising and vaccinating stray dogs cost about U.S. $658,744 and saved more than 36,000 years of healthy life from rabies and dog bites at just U.S. $26–40 per year of life preserved, far below the World Health Organization's benchmark of U.S.$2,000 for cost-effectiveness in India. The city saved U.S. $5.6 million, nearly nine times its investment, when the value of lives saved is included, making it one of the most cost-effective public health strategies documented in India. Similarly, modelling in Tamil Nadu shows that vaccinating just 7% of stray dogs annually could reduce human rabies deaths by 70% within five years, while expanding coverage to 13% could reduce deaths by nearly 90%. Both cases highlight that targeted canine vaccination under a One Health framework is feasible, affordable, and highly effective at preventing human rabies deaths while maintaining animal welfare.
Delhi's reliance on mass removals is short-sighted, and does not offer solutions to tackle the root cause, which is rabies rather than dogs. It offers only temporary relief, undermines animal welfare, and risks disrupting the urban ecosystem. Evidence from Goa, Jaipur, and Tamil Nadu shows that targeted canine vaccination, combined with sterilisation, public education, and effective waste management - is both feasible and highly cost-effective. By embracing a One Health strategy, Delhi can protect human lives, uphold animal health and welfare, while restoring ecological balance - providing a sustainable path to eliminate rabies.
(Sharon Sarah Thawaney works with the Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata. [e-mail])