Increase in pets leads to more rabies

City's failure to ensure dogs have vaccination raises risks that deadly disease will spread

As China becomes a home to more and more pets and stray dogs, it is finding it ever more difficult to prevent and control the spread of rabies, officials said.

In Beijing, the risk that dogs are carrying the disease has increased as a result of the city's failure to ensure all of them are vaccinated, said Wei Haitao, director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Agriculture's animal husbandry and veterinary station.