The number of deaths from dog-bites and the consequent cases of rabies has significantly decreased in the recent years, the government claimed.
Although there is no definitive figure available, official counts suggest that up until a couple of years ago, roughly 300,000 people, including male and female adults and children, used to die from rabies infection.
However, according to figures from the Infectious Diseases Hospital in the capital's Mohakhali area, the number of patients came down to 88 in 2012 from 160 a year ago.
Rabies is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis in warm-blooded animals such as humans. The disease can be transmitted from one species to another, commonly through a bite from an infected animal such as a dog, raccoon or a bat.
For a human, rabies is almost invariably fatal if not addressed immediately after exposure. Symptoms include malaise, headaches, fever, pain, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, depression, hydrophobia, and eventually coma and death.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 90% of cases of human rabies are transmitted by dogs with most deaths occurring in Asia and Africa. Only a few countries, mainly islands and peninsulas such as Australia, New Zealand, Greenland and Japan, are free of the disease.
Professor Dr Benzir Ahmed, director (communicable disease control) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), claimed that the government had taken numerous steps to keep the spread of the disease in the country in check.
He said the steps included raising mass awareness about the disease treatments, prevention, providing free and improved vaccines, birth control measures for dogs, and so on. He added that the government had fixed a target to eliminate rabies from the country by the year 2020.
Sources said with that aim in front, the health ministry is planning to organise a three-day advisory conference of the Saarc countries in Dhaka from August 12 to 14. Prof Benzir said Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan had already agreed to take part in the meet to share their experiences and suggestions.
According to the WHO, Bangladesh, India and Myanmar run high risks of human casualties from Rabies. Every year more than 18,000 to 20,000 people die in India from Rabies. The figure is 2,000-2,500 in Bangladesh and around 1,000 in Myanmar. It also said more than 1.4bn people in the South and Southeast Asian countries run the risk of getting infected by this fatal disease.
Sources say up until 2010, the DGHS provided free vaccination that consisted of 14 simultaneous doses to be injected around the infected individuals navel.
The vaccine, manufactured from sheep brain cells, however, had been declared obsolete several years ago by the WHO.
DGHS Director Prof Benzir Ahmed said they had been supplying a new and improved kind of WHO-prescribed tissue culture vaccine since 2011.
Some 65 rabies prevention and treatment centres have been opened around the country and the DGHS has supplied a total of 250,000 vaccines, he said. Almost all the districts were brought under the dog birth control measure to prevent the reproduction of rabid dogs.