World Zoonoses Day: Hyderabad vets stress rabies vaccination and awareness to prevent animal-borne diseases

Hyderabad marked World Zoonoses Day with awareness drives, seminars and free anti-rabies vaccination camps. Veterinary experts highlighted the importance of preventing zoonotic diseases, noting that nearly 60 per cent of human infectious diseases originate in animals and stressing timely vaccination of pets.

Hyderabad: Veterinary experts, public health officials, animal welfare organizations and animal lovers in Hyderabad organised a series of awareness drives, free vaccination camps, and seminars to mark the occasion of World Zoonoses Day on Monday.

Observed annually on July 6, the day commemorates Louis Pasteur’s historic administration of the first successful rabies vaccine in 1885.

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Pet owners from core areas of Hyderabad and Secunderabad made a beeline to the Government Veterinary Hospital at Narayanguda to avail the annual rabies vaccine for their dogs.

On the occasion of World Zoonosis Day, the Government Veterinary Hospital at Narayanguda provides vaccination to 600 to 700 pet animals at the hospital.

Senior doctors at the Narayanguda veterinary hospital interacted with pet owners and explained about zoonotic diseases, which are essentially infections that are transmitted from animals to humans.

Veterinarians and public health specialists emphasized that nearly 60 percent of known human infectious diseases originate in animals, making preventive measures critical during the high-humidity months.

Some of the most common ailments that get transmitted from animals to humans include leptospirosis, which occurs due to exposure to water contaminated with the urine of rodents and scrub typhus. Doctors, however, pointed out that rabies remains the most common zoonotic disease and is 100 percent preventable viral disease through systematic domestic pet inoculation.