Hurghada Is Getting a 23-Million-Pound Street-Dog Shelter With 122 Rooms, an Operating Theatre and Pools

Hurghada is to get its first purpose-built shelter for free-roaming dogs, and the contract has already been awarded. Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that the Red Sea Governorate's housing directorate has completed the tender and award procedures with a contracting company, that the work is costed at 23 million Egyptian pounds, and that it is due to be finished within eight months.

The shelter will cover up to 2,200 square metres. According to the newspaper, it is to include:

• 122 rooms for holding and housing dogs
• a veterinarian's room for examinations and following up cases
• a veterinary pharmacy for medicines and supplies
• an operating theatre and a recovery room, so surgical cases no longer have to be taken elsewhere
• swimming pools for the dogs and a play area

Dogs collected from the streets are to be examined, vaccinated and sterilised at the centre, with each case handled according to its health and the rules governing it. Animal-welfare associations and civil society organisations are to be brought in to supply dog food and run the sterilisation programmes meant to bring breeding rates down. The governorate frames the project as putting Law 29 of 2023 and its executive regulations into effect, and as an organised answer to the free-roaming dogs found across residential and tourist districts.

The wider support package, per Al-Masry Al-Youm, covers rabies vaccine doses, standard engineering drawings for shelters, technical specifications for the vehicles used to transport dogs, and training courses for staff in holding dogs safely without hurting them.

Dr Wahid Refaat, a former head of the Veterinary Syndicate who supervises several of the private shelters already operating in Hurghada, told the paper an integrated centre is an important step in organising the issue, pointing to years of rising complaints about free-roaming dogs and fears of bites and of rabies. He said Hurghada's nature as a tourist city makes it necessary to balance the safety of residents and tourists, public health, veterinary rules and animal welfare — and cautioned that the project's success depends on how efficiently it is run.

The report does not name the contractor, give the shelter's location within Hurghada, say how many dogs it will hold, or say who will operate it once it is built.