Abbreviation BCI Founder Captain Sundaram | Formation 1959 | |
Motto Animals—It's their world too Type Animal Welfare Organization Headquarters Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India | ||
The Blue Cross of India (BCI) is an animal welfare charity based in Chennai, India. It was established in 1959 by Captain V. Sundaram, in Chennai (then Madras). The society was formally registered in 1964 under the Societies Registration Act. It is now one of the country's largest animal welfare organisations. It runs several animal welfare programs including animal rights awareness.
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The non-medical division of the organisation is looked after by volunteers. The organisation has received several national and international awards.
On July 27, 1994, thirty years after the organisation's founding, it received a gift of 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land and a donation of ₹ 25,00,000.
History
The BCI was established in 1959 by Captain V. Sundaram, who was a member of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) in the 1960s and again in the 1980s. Initially started as a small group, it grew to become one of the country's largest animal welfare organizations, running active animal welfare, animal rights and humane education programmes. It was registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act in 1964. The AWBI granted recognition in 1966.
In 1964, soon after its inception, BCI suggested the city's corporation, which had been catching and killing street dogs since 1869 to control its population, an alternate method of capturing street dogs, neutering them and administering anti-rabies vaccine before discharging them to their original location, which would both control the population and help reduce and eventually prevent human deaths due to rabies. However, as the corporation did not heed this advice, BCI started working on this programme on its own.
BCI began to rescue, spay and vaccinate street dogs and also persuaded pet owners and people taking care of street dogs to bring them for treatment free of cost. By the early 1970s, the number of stray dogs killed by the corporation was so high that the Central Leather Research Institute started designing products such as neckties and wallets from dog skins. By 1996, as many as 135 dogs were killed each day by the corporation, which employed various methods including administering sodium pentothal directly into their hearts, poisoning, electrocuting, clubbing to death and burying alive in pits covered with bleaching powder and pesticides.
In 1995, the then Corporation Commissioner S. Abul Hassan agreed to let BCI carry out the ABC-AR programme in South Madras with the rider that the Commissioner would personally monitor the process and result. In 1995, even as BCI started the ABC-AR programme in South Chennai, street dogs in other parts of the city were still caught and killed. Soon, as the ABC-AR method started yielding visible results, the corporation agreed to relinquish its catch-and-kill policy and implement ABC-AR throughout the city, starting September 1996, marking the beginning of the ABC-AR programme in India. The number of human deaths in Chennai due to rabies dropped from 120 in 1996 to zero in 2007. However, there were fewer death in the following years owing to less rigorous implementation of the ABC-AR programme abiding by the PCA Act (1960) and the Dog Rule Act (2001).
Soon the corporations in other cities in India and around the world invited the then Chairman of the BCI, Chinny Krishna, to share the expertise in international conferences in Bratislava, Cairo, Sofia, Orlando, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, Bali and Chengdu and to initiate the ABC-AR programmes in their cities. In May 2013, the government of the Republic of Mauritius, which had been using catch-and-kill as the only method to control the number of stray dogs, solicited the assistance of BCI to introduce ABC-AR programme in Mauritius.
Functions
The Blue Cross is affiliated to the RSPCA and WSPA. The administration and non-medical activities of the organisation are almost entirely looked after by voluntary members in order to ensure that all monies received by the society are used primarily for animal welfare activities.
Locations
The registered office is in Chennai, located at Eldams Road in Alwarpet, along with other outreach sites—such as hospitals, shelters, ambulance services and animal birth control (ABC) centers—in the city. The main hospital and shelter facilities with ABC centres are located at Guindy and Kunnam in Kanchipuram district. It also has ABC centers in St. Thomas Mount Cantonment, Lloyds Road, at Toducadu in Thiruvallur district.
Activities
Aviary clinic
On 13 January 2013, the Blue Cross of India, along with a student's group known as 'spaaak' opened an aviary clinic at the Chennai centre to treat ailing birds. This is the city's first aviary clinic. The clinic was started with an investment of ₹ 800,000 collected by means of donations.
Awards
In 1963, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals awarded Sundaram the Queen Victoria Medal. In 1964, Sundaram was awarded the Madras SPCA's silver medal and in 1991, the Watumall Foundation of Hawaii bestowed their award for his animal welfare activities. The Mylapore Academy and many others honoured him. The Government of India conferred their Prani Mitra award on him in 1997.