A four-year-old girl who was mauled by a street dog earlier this year died of rabies while undergoing treatment in Bengaluru, a senior official said on Tuesday.
The child was battling rabies for nearly four months and was being treated at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health (IGICH), Bengaluru The victim, Khadeera Banu, passed away on Sunday, hospital director Dr. Sanjay KS said.
The death comes amid a growing stray dog problem in Karnataka, even as the Supreme Court earlier this month ignited a national debate regarding its intervention with the issue in Delhi-NCR.
A resident of Shastri Layout in Davanagere, four-year-old Khadeera was playing outside her house when a street dog attacked her, biting her face and body.
She was rushed to a local hospital with multiple dog bites.
“She was admitted in the ICU here and after tests, rabies was confirmed due to the presence of antibodies,” Dr. Sanjay said, adding that she was referred to IGICH in May as her condition became worse.
The girl was discharged for home care after about a month once her condition was stable, the doctor said.
However, Khadeera’s conditioned further worsened and she became unresponsive, following which she was rushed to the hospital again requiring emergency intubation, he said.
According to him, it was a case of dumb rabies, where the disease causes paralysis and not aggression.
Responding to various news reports that the family had spent nearly ₹8 lakh on treatment, the IGICH director said, in Bengaluru, the family was not charged.
“It is quite possible that they have spent a lot of money in the private hospital in Davanagere,” he said.
The girl’s father is a street vendor and her mother is a homemaker.
Two boys injured in dog attack in Rajasthan
In two other separate incidents, two minor boys were seriously injured in two separate incidents of stray dog attacks in Udaipur and Alwar districts of Rajasthan.
According to police, a five-year-old boy was mauled by three street dogs while he was playing near his home on Sunday evening in Udaipur.
“The boy was playing outside his residence in Gautam Vihar colony when three stray dogs suddenly attacked him. He was injured and taken to a hospital,” police said.
The stray dogs knocked the child to the ground and dragged him before biting, CCTV footage shows. The mother, hearing her child’s screams, rushed out of the house and chased the digs away before more harm was done.
A similar incident happened on Monday in Alwar where an eight-year-old boy was brutally attacked by stray dogs in Sankhla village.
The boy sustained multiple deep wounds across his body, including his neck, face, back, hips, thighs, arms, legs and abdomen, the police said.
According to locals, Yogesh was returning home after playing with friends when eight to ten stray dogs surrounded him, approximately 100 metres from his house.
Villagers, alerted by the boy’s screams, rushed to his rescue and managed to drive the dogs away using sticks.
The child was immediately rushed to a hospital, where he is undergoing treatment for multiple deep wounds, some of which exposed muscle tissue.