Rabies claimed six lives during the first nine months of the year in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, announced the city's disease prevention and control center on Tuesday.

The center also said that from January to September, 32,954 people in Shenzhen were injured by dog bites or scratches, exceeding the city's total number in 2005. About two thirds were injured by guard dogs, the center confirmed.

"Many Shenzhen citizens have raised pet dogs over the last few years only to abandon them because they were too busy or found it too difficult to care for them. This has increased the number of strays on the streets," said Zhu Xiaofan, chairman of the city's pet club.

The city government issued a regulation on July 1, requiring all dogs in Shenzhen to be registered digitally. But the process, which involves a computer chip being implanted in the dog's ear, neck or thigh, is proving a slow one. Only around 2,000 dogs in the city have the chips, just 1.1 percent of the total.

The information stored on the chips includes an image of the dog, breed, registration and inoculation data as well as the name, phone number and address of the dog's owners.

The center estimates that the city has 180,000 dogs, up 64 percent on the 2005 estimate. When stray dogs are counted, the canine population is probably over 200,000, said an official with the center.

A lack of cooperation from dog owners, a lack of pet hospitals in Shenzhen and too few specialists have all contributed to slow progress in digital canine management in the city, the official said.

Digital management is aimed at preventing rabies cases in the city. A similar approach has been adopted in Shanghai and Beijing.

More than 2,000 rabies deaths were recorded in China in the first nine months of the year, an increase of almost 30 percent on the same period last year. September was the fifth month in a row that rabies topped the list of the most deadly infectious diseases in China.

(Xinhua News Agency November 7, 2006)