SOUTH WOODFORD: Charity hits out over rabies outbreak

8:38am Tuesday 29th April 2008

A HEARTBROKEN charity worker has spoken of her anguish after five puppies she rescued from Sri Lanka were beheaded to prevent a rabies outbreak.

Kim Cooling was left grief-stricken when disease control officers told her they had destroyed the dogs and cut off their heads, after one became rabid and bit three members of staff at Chingford Mount Kennels, on Friday.

The sick puppy, a female mongrel called Milly, died from a seizure before officials from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, (Defra) arrived to put the other four animals down.

The dogs had been brought to Britain by members of Animal SOS Sri Lanka, a charity founded by Ms Cooling to help improve the lives of stray dogs on the South Asian island, and were in quarantine at the time of the incident.

Ms Cooling, of Cheyne Avenue, South Woodford, slammed Defra for killing the animals, which she believes should have instead been monitored, to check whether they carried the killer disease.

She said: "I'm angry that they put the dogs down immediately, rather than waiting to check whether or not they actually had rabies.

"Two of the dogs that were put down didn't even share a cage with Milly, so it's really heartbreaking that they were killed.

"They chopped off the dogs heads to check whether or not they had the disease."

Ms Cooling, a social worker, who runs the charity in her spare time, said all of the dogs had been passed as disease-free by Defra just weeks before the outbreak.

She said: "The vets said all of the dogs were ok when they first arrived here, so I was really shocked to be told that Milly had rabies."

A Defra spokeswoman said the dogs were destroyed as a precautionary measure after they had come into contact with the rabid puppy.

She said: "the Government takes with utmost seriousness its responsibilities to protect human and animal health.

"While initial results indicate that the animals were not in the later stages of rabies, we will not know whether or not they were free of the infection until the tests are finalised before the end of the week.

"It is premature to speculate that the animals were not infected with rabies."

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