LETTER | I was shocked with utter disbelief to read in our social media how some animal activist NGOs have attacked a health awareness poster put out by our Ministry of Health.

The public online educational piece, shared widely over the Internet, offered excellent tips on how the public can protect themselves, amongst others, against contracting zoonotic viruses and diseases from animals - including the deadly Covid-19 threat.

Instead of commending the government for their quick-thinking and most timely move, several groups unfortunately chose to take issue with the ministry for using an image of a dog under the poster's animals section - accusing the authorities of creating "fear" and "hatred" for dogs among the general public.

I viewed the poster as well but didn't see any of such nonsense. The ministry's awareness piece was brilliant, I thought. Amongst others, it offered some easy-to-understand and helpful guidelines in particular, of how to protect ourselves from possibly getting infected through an animal source.

To do this, they came up with a novel idea of using the image of a friendly and appealing Beagle breed of canine to represent all animals. This was rather cleverly done. The beagle instilled a calm (not panicky) mood in everyone in delivering the ministry's important health message.

Without mentioning the word, "dog" at all, it went on to advise the need to practise basic hygiene and cleaning methods when coming into contact with animals. These include activities and situations like visiting a farm, slaughterhouse, wet market with live animals to directly interacting with companion pets.

This is and has always been good practice for anyone - whether there is a threat of Covid-19 threat or not. As to whether dogs and cats can be infected and spread Covid-19 as a result, there is easily available information at your fingertips online on this or from your local veterinary of health care expert.

The World Health Organisation, for example, stresses the point that there has been no scientific evidence to date that dogs or cats have been affected.

However, at the same time, experts also can't guarantee it cannot happen either - more so at this present moment when so very little critical details are still very much unknown about Covid-19 with top epidemiologists and virologists scrambling to know more so that they can effectively treat, find a cure and produce an effective vaccine for it.

So there was absolutely nothing nefarious at all about the ministry's poster to remotely even suggest that they had intentions at targeting dogs in order to start a witchhunt against them.

Other than using a picture of a dog to represent all animals, it was interesting to note that the poster never mentioned the word, "dog" at all. So why were these animal groups raising their hackles at the ministry?

It is so very sad how some people are so overwhelmed by their prejudice against the government so much so they are unable to see the great and tireless work done daily by our authorities to do everything they can to stop a most dreaded virus from turning into a very nasty one in our society.

The writer is president of Petpositive, an animal-assisted therapy organisation.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.