This was evident when the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Land and Environmental Affairs (DARDLEA) hosted World Rabies Day on Thursday 26 September, 2024, rightly falling on 28 September each year.

The celebration of World Rabies Day culminated in an all-out vaccination of dogs in and around villages around Mkhuhlu, whereby, Veterinary Surgeons and their assistants, visited the villages, set up examining centres awaiting visitation by dog owners and their pets to have them medically examined by teams of highly qualified veterinary surgeons who, upon examining the dogs, meted out medical procedures on the dogs, while their owners waited on the side awaiting their revival after undergoing surgery.

Speaking to Dr Sibusiso Gulwako who explained the purpose of the day, he said: “Today we’re celebrating World Rabies Day two days before the official day on Saturday 28 September. Basically, today we’re doing sterilisation of the dogs. This is an opportunity for those who do not want their dogs to have puppies or impregnate other dogs, to undergo sterilisation.

“This, basically, is birth control which we mete out on dogs so that we don’t have too many dogs that we cannot control. For the male dogs, we remove the testicles and female ones we remove the utherus.
“On arrival, the pet owners arrive and we register them, then we inject them to make them sleep in readiness for the procedure. They are then operated on by the surgeons , on completion, they are left alone to regain consciousness.”

The procedure takes 45 minutes to an hour, the time vacillates between male and female depending on the ability of the dog.

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Dog owner, Edwell Maseko, whose two dogs underwent the procedure said encouraged others to keep their dogs healthy. “Dogs are an important component of our families as they come in handy at night in keeping criminals at bay,” he said.

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