PESHAWAR, Aug 14: About 1,200 cases of dogbites have so far been reported in the NWFP with 495 of them occurring in the Malakand division and 395 in the Peshawar district, doctors say.

They were speaking during the concluding session of a three- day workshop organzied jointly by the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, and the NWFP health department in Mardan on Friday.

The workshop was aimed at capacity building of the staff of the district and tehsil headquarters hospitals, rural health centres and basic health units.

Lamenting the high cost of anti-rabies vaccines, Dr Fayyaz Ali, focal person for the rabies control programme NWFP, said that the focus should be laid on increasing public awareness, elimination of pye dogs, registration of domestic animals and pets and their vaccination.

Quoting World Health Organization statistics, he said that there were 2.5 million dogs in Pakistan, of them 500,000 in the NWFP.

Dr Fareeda, coordinator of the National Rabies Control Programme, Islamabad, said that vaccines produced by the NIH were available in the public sector hospitals free of charge.

District Nazim Raza Khan, EDO, health Dr Abdur Rahim, Dr Qazi Shahab and others also spoke on the occasion.