Rumor that Depo Provera could be used in street dogs began in Sri Lanka 24 years ago & Sri Lankan dog rescuers want it to end there
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka––Champa Fernando, secretary of the Sri Lankan humane society KACPAW, is hopeful of an imminent end to 25 years of frequently fatal misuse of the human birth control drug Depo Provera in street dog population control.
Originating in Sri Lanka in 2001, hope for Depo Provera as a cheap, easily administered alternative to spay surgery rapidly and catastrophically spread to Africa and to the Asian Pacific region.
Depo Provera is used in some closely supervised kennels
Depo Provera, the chemical name of which is medroxyprogesterone acetate, was already used, and still is, by prescription only, for dog birth control in some U.S. and European show dog, sled dog, hunting dog, and greyhound racing kennels.
Depo Provera is also used, under veterinary supervision, for pet dog birth control in some European nations, despite a high risk of the dogs developing pyometra.
But Depo Provera, developed in 1956 by Laboratorios Syntex SA of Mexico City and the Upjohn pharmaceutical empire, was never intended to be given to dogs.
Upjohn introduced Depo Provera to the U.S. for limited medical use on June 18, 1959 under the brand name Provera. In 1960, however, follow-up safety testing on beagles discovered that Depo Provera appeared to trigger the growth of breast tumors.
Global use as human contraceptive
Regulatory agencies, both in the U.S. and worldwide, eventually concluded that beagles were not an appropriate model for human use of Depo Provera.
Depo Provera came into widespread global use as a human contraceptive in 1969, was approved for U.S. use as a long-term injectable contraceptive in 1992, and is today among the 240 most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S., included on the World Health Organization List of Essential Medicines.
Depo Provera has remained controversial for various reasons, including alleged side effects on women’s health and alleged misuse to control fertility among African, African-American, and lower caste Indian women without their consent.
Uganda chief vet recommended Depo Provera ––with reservations
But the effects of Depo Provera on dogs was not part of the public controversy until the Uganda SPCA, rallying against strychnine poisoning of dogs in Kampala, the Ugandan capital city, in February 2000 persuaded Ugandan health ministry chief veterinarian Chris Retebarika to recommend as a short-term emergency measure that owners of pet female dogs put them on Depo Provera.
Retebarika noted that 73% of the dogs in Kampala had no human owners, and therefore could not be kept under veterinary supervision to the same extent as owned dogs.
Whether the recommended use of Depo Provera had any visible results in Uganda, either in terms of dog health or dog population reduction, is unknown.
The Uganda SPCA in August 2001 opened a spay/neuter clinic in Kamwokya, a Kampala suburb, and has been doing conventional spay/neuter surgeries ever since.
Sri Lankan elephant vet stepped in
Commenting on the recommendations of Retebarika and the Uganda SPCA, veterinarian Kala Santha of Rajagiriya, Sri Lanka, best known for work with captive elephants, now deceased, wrote to international media in 2001 that “The regional director of health gave us permission to give contraceptive injections of Depo Provera to dogs, together with anti-rabies vaccination.
“This is very economical,” Kala Santha wrote, “as one Depo Provera vial costing about $1.00 can be used to prevent three female dogs from having litters. A 50-milligram intramuscular injection is enough.
“My mother and I donated the injections used in our own city,” Kala Santha said. “Now Colombo is using the contraceptive injections too.
“The only disadvantage,” Kala Santha argued, “is that Depo Provera is effective for only six to eight months per injection, requiring that dogs must be caught and re-injected at regular intervals.”
Rebuttal from Eva “Padma” Ruppel
Rebuttals soon followed from World Society for the Prevention of Animals representative Brian Faulkner and Eva Ruppel, a Swiss immigrant to Sri Lanka long involved in animal welfare, better known as simply “Padma.”
Kala Santha had used the correct dose for the average 20-pound street dog, Ruppel found, but warned that “P.A.L. Harischandra, the director of Public Health & Veterinary Services, who introduced the use of Depo Provera for street dogs in Sri Lanka and has already distributed it to many public health workers, is instructing the [workers] to inject 0.7 ml.,” or nearly half again the dose Santha used, “which of course doubles the risk of the dog developing pyometra, which is already high even when the proper dose is given.”
That was only the start of the potential issues Ruppel and others in Sri Lanka observed and reported.
“Who is there, to take a stray for emergency surgery?”
Explained Ruppel, “Depo Provera injection prevents pregnancy only for one season. The dogs get pregnant five to six months after it is given,” if the injected dogs are not promptly caught for follow-up injections, “so the injected dogs will give birth to several puppies before the development of pyometra, which occurs in 90% of the dogs treated with Depo Provera.
“That makes it impossible for the dog to get pregnant again because there is no more space for an embryo to develop in that womb filled with cancerous growth.
“In the final stage of the disease the dog cannot eat any more because of the intense pain and then she dies if not taken for emergency surgery, meaning removal of the womb.
“And who is there, to take a stray for emergency surgery?” Ruppel asked.
“Hardly any of those female dogs are alive today”
“If the dog happens to be pregnant at the time when the injection is given,” Ruppel continued, “the puppies die inside the womb. If the dog is lucky, an abortion [stillbirth] will take place. Otherwise she will die due to the dead puppies inside her womb.”
“Unfortunately,” Ruppel admitted, “I did not know all this when Dr. Harischandra was posing as an advocate of humane solutions at the 2003 Asia for Animals conference. Otherwise I would not have listened quietly to his presentation of a pilot project carried out by him in the Puttalam District in the North West of Sri Lanka.
“In this pilot-project,” Ruppel said, several months after the 2003 conference, “all street dogs were given the anti-rabies vaccination and all females were injected with Depo Provera, which of course eradicated rabies in the district and successfully stabilized the dog population because hardly any of those female dogs are alive today.”
S/N picked up after Indian Ocean tsunami
The pace of conventional spay/neuter surgery picked up considerably in Sri Lanka following the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, largely through the efforts of expatriate American electrical engineer Robert Blumberg.
Only just arrived in Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit, Blumberg helped to lead the disaster relief effort, turned the fundraising momentum from that into a rabies vaccination campaign, and then combined that with a spay/neuter project. The spay/neuter project continued for many years after Blumberg moved on and eventually retired.
Rabies revived official interest in Depo Provera
In 2022, however, rabies contracted from dog bites killed 28 humans in Sri Lanka.
Public Health Veterinary Services director L.D. Kithsiri complained that his office had been allocated only enough funding to vaccinate and do spay/neuter surgery on about 25,000 dogs in 2023.
“We need to perform spay/neuter surgery on at least 100,000 dogs every year to achieve our target of no rabies deaths,” Kithsiri told Mongabay correspondent Hassaan Shazuli.
Kithsiri therefore proposed to use a World Health Organization grant to administer Depo Provera to 50,000 street dogs.
The Sri Lanka Veterinary Association, the Sri Lanka Veterinary Council, Justice for Animals, Animal Wellness Trust, Adopt a Dog in Sri Lanka, and KACPAW rose in protest.
“Immediate suspension”
Summarized Shazuli on March 8, 2023, “A proposed pilot project to inject a human contraceptive on 50,000 dogs sparked outrage, prompting its immediate suspension.”
But Shazuli noted that, “The Veterinary Drug Control Authority, which falls under the purview of the Department of Animal Production & Health, has not banned the use of this contraceptive for animals.”
Warned Champa Fernando, “The pilot project to use this injection on dogs has only been suspended. This means it can take place sometime in the future.”
Fernando now hopes that broad distribution of a March 27, 2024 memo to pharmacists from the National Medicines Regulatory Authority of Sri Lanka might finally quell the bureaucratic enthusiasm for Depo Provera.
Unauthorized use
Under the heading “Misuse of Depo-Povera (Medroxyprogesterone acetate) for Use on Animals,” the memo asks Sri Lankan pharmacists to “Please note that Depo Provera, has been registered as a prescription only medicine intended solely for use on humans by qualified physicians.”
Pharmacists were therefore warned “to issue Depo Provera only on a valid prescription issued by a qualified medical practitioner.
“It has been revealed,” the memo said, “that vet assistants,” including “some retired and in-service rabies vaccinators, are misusing this medicine during mass vaccination campaigns at the community level for economic gains.”
The memo went on to “advise that this medicine should never be used on animals under any circumstance.”
Opined Champa Fernando, “This is a huge win for the welfare of Sri Lanka’s animals,” thanking “all three veterinary professional bodies in Sri Lanka” for lending “a HUGE VOICE!”
Depo Provera for hippos?
ANIMALS 24-7 is not aware of any other government agency promoting the use of Depo Provera as a “quick fix” or “final solution” for street dog population problems since the notion surfaced in 2011 in response to continuing rabies outbreaks in Bali, Indonesia.
But bizarre schemes for use of Depo Provera in animals have considerable history.
In 2002, for example, a study of “Ovarian function in the Nile hippopotamus and the effects of Depo-Provera administration” appeared in Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Fertility Control in Wildlife, pertaining to use in zoos.
This led to media speculation that wild hippo populations might be controlled and attacks on humans prevented by somehow putting female hippos on Depo Provera.
No one is known to have actually tried it, perhaps partly because the oft-cited claim that hippos kill upward of 500 humans per year in Africa appears to be grossly exaggerated.
Though hippos do occasionally charge, bite, and stomp humans to death, usually after accidental night encounters, and sometimes wreck cars with occupants inside, most reported human fatalities involving hippos occur simply because a hippo surfaces unexpectedly in a lake or river, swamping a boat whose occupants drown.
And that does not happen terribly often where boaters watch for hippos.
Please donate to help our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate
Discover more from Animals 24-7
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
ALL drugs have side effects and many if not most are dangerous. The biomedical empire is no one’s friend and their bottom line is not care, but cash.
Sharing with gratitude.
Old information based on small studies, or inaccurate information or even folklore medicine, get recycled because people are desperate for a non-surgical solution to the overwhelming overpopulation of dogs and cats. Sadly most research is not going to be available to the dogs on the streets for decades to come due to profit margins.
Spay FIRST! is a research based organization striving to develop a low cost (read our lips, cheap) injection that lasts at least one year and that is not beholden to investors.
As pointed out in this ANIMALS 24-7 article, reproductive cycles of animals have been manipulated for decades in order to increase the ability to get animals into and out of the show ring or for production purposes. The fact is that money, not animal welfare, has been the driver. And people who care about the animals are as desperate for a non-surgical solution as ever because the ability to spay our way out of the tragedies does not exist.
According to W.H.O. there are 700 million dogs globally. Research commissioned by Spay FIRST! revealed that over two thirds of dogs receive no veterinary care whatsoever, not even a rabies vaccine. Our research was presented at Rabies In The Americas (RITA) November 2024, in Buenos Aires. The lack of care is sobering as is the fact that the average lifespan of a street dog is 2.4 to 3.5 years; in the absence of minimal resources they starve, thirst and freeze to death.
Without a low cost, easy to transport and administer vaccine or drug, unwanted dogs will remain starving on the streets and those who care them will try anything to stop the litters.
A product must be patented in the public domain or otherwise be guaranteed to reach the poor first and foremost. Otherwise the neediest animals will continue to stand by with nothing.
There is not enough effort placed on ending the breeding of dogs. In New York State, for instance, the Department of Ag. & Mkts encourages people to become “Pet Dealers.”
They apply for and get licenses to have hundreds of dogs. Their “inspectors” call the breeders well ahead of time to let them know they will be doing an inspection. This gives these places time to clean up and move dogs around. We have hundreds of dog breeders in NYS. IMO, it’s outrageous.