Malaysia is blaking Thai dogs for possibly causing rabies outbreak in its border state of Perlis.
Malaysian health authorities were alert on the disease after six of 22 dogs that bit people in the state since Aug 17 were found to be carrying the virus, according to the Bernama news agency.
The number of dogs testing positive for rabies has risen to 20, the New Straits Times Online on Wednesday reported, quoting Perlis's Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Committee chairman Sabry Ahmad.
The first rabid dog was found in Padang Besar, the Malaysian border town. It bears the same name as the bordering Thai town in Sadao district of Songkhla province that became infamous in May when 33 graves of Rohingya migrants were found there.
Mr Sabry suspected the dog, which later died, had contracted rabies from stray dogs on the other side of the border to spread the disease in Malaysia.
"It is learnt that southern Thailand has yet to be cleared of rabies,'' he was quoted as saying in the New Straits Times.
"Given the location of the first dog infected with the virus, which is near to the unfenced border, there is a possibility that the dog had contracted the disease from stray dogs from Thailand,'' he added.
Thailand's Public Health Ministry has embarked on a campaign to fight the disease. The virus killed four people from January to September last year, one of them in Songkhla, the ministry said in a press release.
The disease in Thailand reached a crisis stage in 1989 when 370 people bit by infected dogs died and the number of victims has dropped since then.