Call to action following increase in dog attacks

A new study has warned that fresh measures, including legislative reform, are needed to reduce the growing need for hospital treatment linked to dog bites.

Analysis published in the Public Health journal has revealed that hospital admissions caused by dog bites and strikes rose by almost 55% in Wales across an eight-year period.

The trend is nearly four times greater than the equivalent 14.7% increase in England over the same timescale, with around a fifth of all cases involving children.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool and the Dogs Trust said their findings demonstrated the need for further action.

The paper concluded: “To improve public health, dog bite prevention and intervention strategies, including changes to legislation and enforcement, need to be directed into areas with greater risk of injuries for efficient allocation and greatest impact of resources.”

Hospital admission

The analysis, which was based on where patients lived within local health board areas, found that the overall number of bite and strike incidents that required a hospital admission rose from 15.3 per 100,000 people in 2014-15 to 23.7 in 2021-22, an increase of 54.9%.

Most of that rise was accounted for by incidents involving non-geriatric adults, although 20.8% of cases affected children under the age of 14.

The Swansea Bay area had the highest level of incidents, with 56.1 cases recorded per 100,000 people, while the issue is also estimated to have cost the NHS around £2 million across the whole research period.

Baseline levels

The paper stressed that most areas were not seeing increases in the overall level of dog bite incidents, though it did suggest baseline levels were higher than for most English local authorities, while higher incident levels were also reported in areas of greater socio-economic deprivation.

Although the researchers said the reasons for that were unclear, reduced ability to cover the cost of veterinary and behavioural support, the sourcing of puppies, confined housing space and potential training for aggression were all highlighted as possible factors.

The study also pre-dates the implementation of recent legislation to ban the ownership of non-exempted XL bully dogs, which came into full effect in England and Wales in February.

Co-author John Tulloch said the rising trend of admissions was likely to have continued beyond the period of analysis, although he cautioned that there was no way of telling the extent to which XL bullys had contributed to that because of the lack of breed data in hospital records.

Effectiveness

But Dr Tulloch also voiced concerns about the effectiveness of current breed-specific legislation, adding: “Breeds of dog are not set in stone, as new traits can quickly be bred in or out of a breed or type.

“Dog conformation can shift so quickly in a few generations of breeding, it is challenging to see how breed-specific legislation can effectively control against this.

“Legislation and policy would be better focused on making sentencing guidelines harsher and in tighter control of the breeding and selling of dogs.”

The paper also called for UK-wide monitoring of dog-related injuries that require medical attention. The researchers warned that while most bite and strike incidents that lead to a hospital admission occur within the home, there was the potential for data to underestimate the true scale of the problem due to the risk of cases not being reported.