Vaccines / Vaccinations

The Auroville Dog Shelter has warned that rabies continues to be present in the Auroville area. Due to budget constraints, it is unable to renew the 1500 dog and cat vaccinations it did last year and is also forced to halt its successful “1000-dog-in-a-year” sterilisation programme, which, it warns, will lead to an exponential increase in the number of puppies in the entire area.

An Auroville health scare started some weeks ago, when three aggressive dogs were reported in and around the Auroville grounds. The Auroville Dog Shelter was on call, and was able to collect and quarantine all three dogs.

The rescue team of the Auroville Dog Shelter caught inside Transition School a black female dog that acted extremely aggressively and displayed signs of a possible rabies infection.

One of the main services of Auroville’s Pavilion of Tibetan Culture is hosting the Tibetan doctor with his trainees and administrative staff for three to four days a month.

The Auroville Dog Shelter, home to nearly 300 rescued dogs, urgently needs financial support. Despite being a municipal service, it receives only Rs. 50,000 per month from the Budget Coordination Committee, far short of the Rs. 3 lakh needed for basic expenses like food, wages, vital medicines and vaccinations.

Aurosugan coordinated Auroville's COVID response in the second wave, drawing on his experience in health care administration at the Aravind Eye Hospital, working together with the Auroville support team.

“Vaccination lag in rural India points to a looming crisis” runs the May 19 front page article of The Hindu, one of India’s national newspapers.

In April and May 2021, India witnessed a surge in COVID-19 infections, with the country seeing over 3,50,000 fresh cases of COVID-19 daily, one of the highest one-day tallies anywhere in the world and the number of deaths was also increasing every day.