KARACHI: Two days after the health department officials at a meeting chaired by the chief secretary claimed that 250 rabies treatment and prevention centres were currently operational across the province, another child fell victim to the deadly infectious disease, it emerged on December 22.
Sources said the 12-year-old victim, who was brought to the Indus Hospital on Tuesday morning, hailed from Usta Muhammad, Nasirabad district, Balochistan.
He was initially treated at the government taluka hospital of Garhi Khairo, part of Jacobabad district, over two months ago.
“He got multiple shots at the Garhi Khairo hospital following a dog-bite in our village on Oct 28th. Last Sunday (Dec 21), he started fearing water, forcing the family to take him to the same hospital. The doctors told us that the child had seriously been affected by the dog-bite and that he should be immediately taken to Karachi for treatment,” his uncle, wishing not to be named told Dawn, adding that a teenage boy had also died in their neighbourhood following a dog-bite over 20 days ago.
Woman ‘sold her earrings’ to bring son to Karachi; Indus Hospital official says boy is receiving palliative care
Sources said the boy’s mother had to sell her gold earrings to transport her son in an ambulance to Karachi where they reported first at the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK).
At the CHK, the sources said, the boy was provided some treatment and the family was told to check some other hospital for admission to an intensive care unit.
The family, sources said, took the boy to at least three different hospitals before they arrived at the Indus Hospital, which has seen three rabies deaths within a month so far.
“The patient has already developed rabies encephalitis when he was brought to us today. Currently, he is receiving palliative care,” said Aftab Gohar, Manager Rabies Prevention and Training Centre at the hospital.
According to him, the patient sustained multiple dog bites to both hands and a leg.
Asked about the lapses in treatment, Mr Gohar said that patient’s history showed that neither the injuries were properly washed at the health facility where they first reported nor the patient received rabies immunoglobulin (RIG) — a life-saving medicine that’s essential to be administered in all serious dog-bite injuries.
“Each wound was deep, carrying a high risk for rabies. Also, there is a question mark over the vaccine’s quality,” he said, adding that the family had no document to prove that the vaccine was actually administered.
Information gathered from the family, he said, indicated that the dog was rabid and had bitten several other people in the locality.
According to experts, rabies is a completely preventable disease; however, it is almost invariably fatal once clinical symptoms develop, underscoring the critical importance of timely and complete post-exposure prophylaxis following animal bites.
On behalf of the Pakistan Medical Association, Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro has called upon the government health department to immediately equip all hospitals with life-saving RIG and the relevant vaccine and train healthcare providers in dealing with animal bite cases.
“What’s being reported is just tip of the iceberg. A large number of dog bite cases and rabies’ patients not even reach hospitals,” he said.
So far, this year, at least 22 patients, most of the children, have died of rabies while over 42,000 cases of dog-bite have been reported at three tertiary care hospital of Karachi alone.
Published in Dawn, December 24th, 2025.