Three very different parts of Asia, but only one effective solution to ubiquitous street dogs
TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka; HATAY, Turkey; HANOI, Vietnam––Landlocked Hatay province in arid southeastern Turkey, humid Vietnam, more than four thousand air miles farther east, and Trincomalee, an ancient port city on the east coast of Sri Lanka, about equidistant from either Hatay or Hanoi, have only three things obviously in common: all three are in Asia, by far the largest continent; all three have hot climates; and all three have abundant street dogs, mostly tolerated but problematic, and sometimes dangerous due to endemic rabies.
(Mission Rabies photo)
Vaccination alone does not fix the street dog problem
All three places also have long had anti-rabies vaccination programs, but vaccinating street dogs against rabies, while effective when done in a sustained, systematic manner, does not address the underlying problem of too many dogs at large, outbreeding any and all rabies control efforts, from vaccinating dogs to just poisoning or shooting as many as possible, an approach which has historically always been a colossal failure.
What has already been done?
Sri Lanka has had many localized spay/neuter programs over the years, but none effectively covering the whole island, comparable in size to the state of West Virginia.
Turkey from 2004 until mid 2024 had a governmentally subsidized national spay/neuter program, but the underfunded and often poorly managed program often faltered, especially in the hinterlands like Hatay, far from Istanbul.
Istanbul and suburbs, culturally more like Europe than the Middle East, together include about 20% of the Turkish population, and hold more like half the nation’s wealth.
The rural remainder of Turkey, including Ankara, the national capital, are culturally Middle Eastern, and economically struggling.
(See Fighting 2004 no-kill law, Turkish prime minister Erdogan runs for dogcatcher.)
The Soi Dog Foundation is only a year into the first major attempt to introduce spay/neuter to Vietnam.
(See Soi Dog Foundation in 2024 helped Vietnam to cut rabies deaths by 20%.)
Sri Lanka, unlike Turkey and Vietnam, also has Champa Fernando, managing secretary for KACPAW, the leading nonprofit humane society on the island.
Champa Fernando
Fernando since 1998 has worked to demonstrate four key points to public officials:
- Poisoning or shooting dogs is ineffective against either rabies or dog overpopulation, and anyway is not acceptable to the majority Buddhist human population of Sri Lanka;
- Impounding dogs just to hold them indefinitely in inevitably overcrowded, filthy pounds, in lieu of killing them outright, is as ineffective and inhumane as poisoning and shooting, amounting to “slow kill” in the name of “no kill”;
(See Sri Lankan government shelter became the disaster predicted.)
- There are no “magic bullet” quick and easy solutions, such as injecting dogs with Depo Provera, an approach to contraception long favored by some politically influential Sri Lankans;
(See Depo Provera: found deadly to dogs in 1960 & still not safe for street use.)
- Surgical spay/neuter, which can be done safely in Sri Lanka at a fraction of the typical U.S. cost, is the most practical, economical, and humane approach, especially when combined with anti-rabies vaccination, to controlling both the abundance of dogs and the risk of rabies outbreaks.
Pilot project
“We managed to convince the authorities in Trincomalee District to convert the government dog shelter at Konesapuri into a transit home for sterilization, rabies vaccination, and release,” Fernando exulted in a Valentine’s Day 2025 Facebook message to ANIMALS 24-7.
The Konesapuri shelter, Fernando mentioned, was “set up by the previous government at a cost of eight million rupees ($27,150 U.S. dollars), and is now incurring a running cost of several hundred thousand rupees [per year] on something unmanageable, inhumane, and unproductive.
“We hope to suggest to the authorities to develop this facility, built on one acre of land, into a government veterinary hospital,” Fernando said.
Meanwhile, Fernando continued, “KACPAW promised to initiate the catch, neuter, vaccinate, and release project by spaying 300 to 500 dogs, both unowned and owned.
“This may be a start,” with help
“This may be a start,” Fernando hoped, “to countrywide catch, neuter, vaccinate, and release, and to putting a stop to any ideas of setting up government dog shelters again.
“Ours is a huge undertaking. We hope to do the mass spay clinics in early March 2025,” Fernando wrote.
“We are seeking our supporters’ help to fund spaying at [$17 U.S. dollars] per dog which includes surgery, transport to and from from our Kandy clinic and within Trincomalee,” along with dog catching labor, mange treatment, treatment for any other veterinary issues, “dog chains, collars, post-operative care as needed, dog food, and incidental,” Fernando listed.
[KACPAW welcomes donations at https://kacpaw.org/donations/.]
Turkey replaces s/n with impoundment
Turkey on July 30, 2024 replaced the national street dog sterilization program with a law requiring that stray dogs be impounded, be kept in shelters, be offered for adoption, and if not adopted, be euthanized if aggressive or showing symptoms of untreatable disease.
Turkish Veterinary Medical Association president Gülay Ertürk explained to Veterinary Information Network News correspondent Özgür Öğret in October 2024 that killing healthy dogs who pose no danger to humans is still illegal in Turkey.
But Turkey has from 2.7 million to four million street dogs, Ertürk told Öğret, while the 322 dog pounds have a maximum capacity of only about 105,000 dogs.
“Since the new law went into effect,” Öğret wrote, “reports have surfaced of strays being killed systematically.
Dog massacres
“Authorities in the municipalities of Niğde in central Turkey and Altındağ in the capital Ankara, for instance, are investigating two animal shelters after large numbers of dead dogs and even cats were found either buried or lying uncovered on their properties.
“Both shelters have denied accusations of criminal conduct,” Öğret summarized, “maintaining the animals were killed either in accordance with the new law or, in the case of the Niğde shelter, brought there dead because it has an animal cemetery.
“In Turkey’s west,” Öğret added, “the bodies of about a dozen dogs were reportedly found in sacks at a garbage dump. Separately, three dead dogs found beside a highway reportedly were suspected to have been killed by some form of injection since syringes were found stuck in their bodies.”
Concluded Öğret, “Ertürk and other veterinarians are pinning hopes on efforts launched in August by Turkey’s main opposition party to persuade the country’s Constitutional Court to revoke the law. Municipalities controlled by opposition parties, she notes, aren’t aggressively collecting stray dogs as they await the high court’s decision.”
This appears to be where the situation remains, while sporadic rabies outbreaks continue, including in the Kırıkhan district of Hatay in early January 2025.
Rabies deaths demonstrate need for s/n in Vietnam
In Vietnam, meanwhile, “A man who traded and slaughtered dogs in Gia Lai Province in Viet Nam’s Central Highlands succumbed to rabies after getting a dog bite over a month earlier and not getting vaccinated,” the provincial Center for Disease Control told Tuoi Tre News on February 3, 2025.
Viet Nam News two weeks earlier reported the death of a 10-year-old from rabies in Băng A Drênh Commune, in the Central Highlands province of Đắk Lắk.
Seven Đắk Lắk residents died from rabies in 2004.
The rabies deaths illustrate the epidemiological importance of ending the traffic in dogs and cats consumption, already widely recognized among Vietnamese public health officials; of not relying exclusively on post-exposure treatment of human bite victims to prevent rabies deaths; of routinely vaccinating dogs and cats against rabies; and of encouraging spay/neuter to keep the dog and cat populations low enough that vaccinating them all is feasible.
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