An estimated 31,000 human deaths due to rabies occur annually in Asia,"Rabies" World Health Organization (WHO) with the majority – approximately 20,000 – concentrated in India. Worldwide, India has the highest rate of human rabies in the world primarily due to stray dogs. Because of a decline in the number of vultures due to acute poisoning by the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac (vultures themselves are not susceptible to rabies), animal carcasses that would have been consumed by vultures instead became available for consumption by feral dogs, resulting in a growth of the dog population and thus a larger pool of carriers for the rabies virus. Another reason for the great increase in the number of stray dogs is the 2001 law that forbade the killing of dogs.
