City Reporter
A total of 10,886 dog bite cases were treated at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center in
Karachi in 2019—and cases have been going up every single year since 2011, according to the hospital’s
data.The reports about dog bites and the shortage of rabies vaccinations for bite victims have also been
on the rise, adding to the general sense of fear, apathy and even hatred towards stray dogs in the
country. The problem, Pakistan Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) co-founder Mahera Omar believes, may
not lie with the dogs but rather with people and our collective failure to co-exist with other living beings.
“We have to rethink our relationship with dogs,” said Omar. “We have separated ourselves from nature
and other living beings in our urban settings. Dogs are used in villages all over Pakistan as guard dogs,
shepherd dogs and even as pets and companions. Only in the major cities of the country do we distrust
them this way.”
