GEORGE TOWN, Sept 29 – Animal welfare NGO Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) is able to rapidly deploy 40,000 doses of rabies vaccination once their usage in a mass vaccination program was approval by Putrajaya. WVS CEO Dr Luke Gamble said that the vaccines will be sponsored and estimated the cost to be about £400,000 (RM2.704 million).
“Our target was to vaccinate 70% of the dog population in Penang which also been estimated at 50,000 are including pets and strays. Meanwhile, the vaccination also need to take around three to six months to get the approval,” he said in a press conference today with Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.
“The programme will be a flagship for controlling rabies in the region and will be developed to exceed the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) guidelines. In the same time, the dogs vaccinated will also be marked while the follow-up teams will be deployed to survey the vaccinated and non-vaccinated dog population,” he said.
Gamble said that the markers are non-toxic and all activities will be data logged. On bringing in the vaccines, Rozanah said the DVS will try to expedite the process, noting that the normal procedure to evaluate vaccines will be taken about three months but this was in emergency, so we will try the best to complete in at least a month.
She added that the evaluation was important for biosecurity due to we need to ensure that there was no new viruses were will be introduced into Malaysia. In additional, there were also 750 doses of rabies vaccine will also be reach to Penang on this coming Friday. Also present were Putrajaya Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) senior chief assistant director Dr Rozanah Asmah Abd Samad and Penang DVS director Dr Siti Salmiyah Tahir.
