Letter to Consul-General
March 5th, 2009 by adminAs many of you now know, rabies was confirmed in Bali in November 2008. We are deeply concerned about the ineffectiveness of the government’s current program to control this disease. Although the Balinese government has initiated education, vaccination and elimination programs to control rabies; they are still limiting the distribution of rabies vaccines and are poisoning healthy, owned dogs using strychnine (a poison known to cause agonizing deaths and deemed inhumane). The government has also encouraged the Balinese to kill street dogs randomly and this has resulted in a dramatic increase in cruelty cases. There are still no animal welfare laws in Indonesia.
We have been trying to convince the government that they need to follow World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines which outline that at least 70% of the total dog and cat population must be vaccinated against rabies in order to control this disease. Financially, it is more economical to pre-vaccinate the population of dogs and cats against rabies than it is to provide post-exposure vaccines and treatment to human bite victims. Furthermore, all scientific evidence has shown that reducing the population of dogs through culling programs has no impact on controlling the spread of rabies and therefore is ineffective.
We need international support to convince the Government of Bali that the use of strychnine is inhumane and that mass culling of dogs will have no impact on disease control.
We need your help to get the message across to the Indonesian government that Australians will not visit a holiday destination where animals are treated so badly. Please help us by sending a letter to the Indonesian Consul-General in your state. A sample letter can be downloaded here :-
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