January 13, 2007	Saturday	Zilhaj 22, 1427

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RAWALPINDI, Jan 12: Two rabid dogs spread panic in the city on Friday as they viciously attacked scores of people out in the streets in different localities, causing an emergency in the city’s two main hospitals.

Most of their 77 victims were children and women who were on their way to school and jobs early morning, and some domesticated animals, in the Dhoke Hukamdad, Muslim Town, Committee Chowk, Raja Bazaar and Dhoke Kala Khan neighbourhoods.

All were sent home after treatment at the Rawalpindi General Hospital (RGH) and the Holy Family Hospital, hospital sources said.

Civic authorities awoke to the situation when alarm bells rang in the two hospitals with the arrival of bite victims, mostly from the impoverished Dhoke Hukamdad locality.

Eventually citizens and the staff of the city’s health department, armed with stones and sticks, killed the two dogs after hard and long chase.

“It was an extraordinary situation,” Dr Saeed Anwar Shah Deputy Medical Superintendent of the RGH told Dawn. Vaccine had to be rushed from the National Institute of Health in Islamabad to cope with the situation.

Rumours were rife that some people had dropped off “a mad dog” from a Suzuki Carry on Thursday night at the graveyard in Dhoke Hukamdad. The dog then bit a second dog, rendering him rabid also.

It was said the two rabid dogs bit 18 people in the locality that night.

District health officials said if RGH Medical Superintendent Dr Habib Ahmed Khan had notified the bite cases same night, a quick response would have saved the subsequent 59 victims.

However Dr Habib, talking to Dawn, defended himself saying 18 incidence of attacks by dogs was not unusual.

Wahab, 12, while narrating his ordeal from the hospital bed, said a bulky white hound pinned him to the street pavement. The dog bit him twice on arms and legs, scratched him, and bruised him.

Another schoolboy Amin said: “The dog came straight at me and leapt upon me”.

Terrified school teacher Ayesha, 27, said the dog suddenly appeared Friday morning in front of the college on Zafarul Haq Road and attacked some 20 girls who were standing there.

Sixty-year-old housewife Nur Jehan suffered puncture wounds on the top and bottom of her arm.

Local Union Council Nazim Haji Saeed said the dogs created panic in the whole neighbourhood. “They chased everyone on the streets and locked their jaws on anyone who came in their way.”

Meharban, an employee of the health department, killed one of the dogs after chasing him on a motorbike from Dhoke Hukamdad to Muslim Town and then to Sultanpura at the back of Islamabad Airport, where he was killed.

“At one place near Chirah Chowk he made us to run for our lives, as we tried to intercept him,” he said.