Khaberni - In a heart-wrenching scene, an Egyptian child breathed his last today after suffering severe injuries from a stray dog attack.
Suez Governorate in eastern Egypt bid farewell today to the child Basel Mohamed Sayed, 10 years old, who died after a bitter 15-day battle in the intensive care unit at Suez Medical Complex.
The tragedy began two weeks ago when the child was on his way to perform Friday prayers accompanied by his brother and friends in the "Nasser" area in Suez. In an instant, the child found himself surrounded by a pack of stray dogs during his attempt to escape and flee from their fierce attack.
However, the dogs managed to catch up with the child and mangled his body, inflicting severe injuries including a ruptured spleen and severe bleeding.
Complete coma
For two weeks, the child was in a complete coma, requiring repeat blood transfusions amid widespread response from the locals, but he ultimately succumbed to complications from his injuries.
This incident with Basel is not the first of its kind, but it is a chapter in a long series that reopens the file on "stray dogs" in Egypt. Unofficial reports and parliamentary calls indicate the presence of millions of stray dogs in the streets of Egyptian governorates, with thousands of biting cases recorded annually.
Recurring Incidents
Recent years have seen similar incidents in several governorates and many villages, where children have paid with their lives due to the proliferation of these dogs in densely populated residential areas.
Meanwhile, citizens are demanding radical alternatives that go beyond mere vaccination and sterilization to curb the aggressiveness of the dogs, emphasizing the necessity of providing specialized shelters or activating immediate removal campaigns from vital streets.
In a decisive governmental move to end the crisis, Dr. Mostafa Madbouly, the Prime Minister, announced a comprehensive national strategy to deal with the phenomenon of "stray animals", where the plan focuses on removing stray dogs from populated areas and expanding unprecedented vaccination and sterilization operations to ensure a balance between citizens' security and animal welfare rules.
