A stray dog was the center of a chaos in the Royapuram area of Chennai on Tuesday evening. The canine bit 29 people in less than two hours on a busy GA Road, which was later beaten to death by the locals who suspected it to be rabid.
According to the witnesses, the dog was lying on the busy road in a commercial area and had suddenly attacked the pedestrians. The dog bit the ankles and feet of the people passing by.
Some said that even when the dog was shaken off, it did not let go of the people. The dead dog has been sent for postmortem to the Madras Veterinary College by the Greater Chennai Corporation.
The GCC veterinary officer, Dr Kamal Hussain suggested that the dog could be affected with rabies as it showed unprovoked aggression.
Ten school children were injured while some senior citizens fell and hurt their heads. 24 of the attacked people had category three bites which means they had deep cuts and bleeding with a possibility of saliva transfer from the dog to human. Every injured person was taken to the nearby Government Stanley Medical College and Hospital and was admitted overnight.
The head of medicine department at SGH, Dr S Chnadrasekhar said that the lower limbs of all victims were washed and they were also given anti-rabies immunoglobulin medication to prevent the spread of the infection to the brain. They also received an anti-rabies vaccine and four more doses will be given.
According to a veterinary medicine specialist who is a professor at TANUVAS, the victims of unprovoked dog bites should receive anti-rabies immunoglobulin serum and vaccine doses within 12 hours as the dogs who attack unprovoked have higher possibility of being rabies positive.
The GCC rounded up 32 dogs of the area after the incident which included six puppies and are kept under observation for rabies.