Rabies Deaths in Sindh Rise to 40 as Elderly Baldia Town Man Dies at JPMC, Hospital Records Over 11,000 Dog Bite Cases This Year

Karachi: Rabies keeps taking lives in Sindh quietly, one delayed hospital visit at a time, and the count has now reached forty. The latest rabies deaths Sindh figures, shared by officials on Friday, record the death of a man in his seventies from Baldia Town at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. A dog had bitten him more than three weeks earlier. He never sought preventive treatment, and by the time he reached hospital there was little anyone could do. He died on Thursday.

One hospital, 11,000 bite cases

JPMC alone has recorded more than 11,000 dog bite cases this year, and ten rabies deaths, the latest one included. Nor is this only a Karachi story. In recent days a 38-year-old man from Diplo in Tharparkar and a 12-year-old boy from Hyderabad have also died of the disease, two names on a list that keeps growing across the province.

The treatment exists — delay is what kills

Health experts say a large share of cases never reach any register at all, because patients rely on home remedies or faith healers instead of a hospital. Once symptoms appear, rabies is almost invariably fatal. But it does not have to end that way: washing the wound thoroughly with soap and running water straight after a bite, completing the vaccine course on time and taking rabies immunoglobulin where doctors advise it can stop the virus before it starts. What the experts are asking for is hardly exotic — public awareness, humane control of the stray dog population, and treatment that is actually available when a frightened family reaches a hospital.