Josie Ford
A dogged presence
Dogs should be kept out of human (that is, non-veterinary) hospitals – or, depending on circumstances, welcomed into them. Research papers make the case one way and another.
“Towards dog-free hospital campuses in India”, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research, nods to hospitals that are, or might be, visited by stray dogs. These are also known in the literature by the old sobriquet “unbridled dogs”, the technical term “free-ranging dogs” and the zippy nickname FRDs.
The report dishes delicious gossip about them: “Apart from rabies, FRDs are reported to transmit several zoonotic diseases… with incidents of …