Stray dog in the temple: Rabies tag and salivary rabies antibody

Dear Sir,

Rabies is an important deadly virus infection. ^[1] All human infection will end up with death. Hence, the prevention is the best method for control of this disease. ^[1] In many tropical countries, this disease is still existed and the dog is the primary problematic animal that brings rabies to human beings. In Thailand, the control of dog is still not successful. An important reason is Thailand is a Buddhist country and the dog is freely kept. Many dogs are left as stray dog and abandoned within the Buddhist temples. The Buddhist monks might give the left food to those dogs, but the good care is usually not reached. Of interest, those abandoned usually bite the human beings and this is a major cause of human post exposure rabies vaccination. ^[2] Here, the author surveyed the stray dogs living in three Buddhists temples in central region of Thailand (for privacy reason, the names of those temple are hereby blinded). Overall 58 stray dogs were studied. It could be seen that all studied dogs had no rabies tags at their neck and the monks within the temples could not give the data about the rabies prophylaxis for those dogs. Nevertheless, the available collected saliva from the dogs showed no positivity for rabies antibody test. Here, it can be seen that abandoned dogs in the Buddhist temple can be the potential source of rabies spreading in the country and these dogs are usually forgotten for special care and control. To reach the successful control of rabies, an important target is to control the stray dog left in many temples of Thailand.

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

DOI: 10.4103/1755-6783.145039