The Moscow City Nature Committee has reported that in the last two years there has been a sharp increase in the number of Muscovites who have become victims of attacks by dogs.


Domestic pets and strays have literally begun terrorizing the population of the capital. While over the past decade the annual number of reported dog bites has ranged from 9,700 in 1982 to 14,300 in 1990, by 1992 the figure had reached 20,111 cases. The figure for 1993 was on approximately the same level: 22,484.


Unfortunately, although rarely, there are fatal cases. In recent months two people have died in Moscow from rabies. One was a 17-year-old boy who was infected by his own dog which had contracted the disease when it was bitten by a fox while at the boy's dacha in the Kaluzhskaya district. The other case involved a five-year-old girl who died after returning with her parents to Moscow from Yemen, where she had been bitten by a stray dog.


Moskovsky Komsomolets, August 2