Clinics

Helping animals other vets can’t reach

Across the world, stray cat and dog populations are spiraling out of control. To combat the problem, the authorities in countries such as Egypt are shooting strays dead in the streets. WSPA offers a more humane solution - mobile vet clinics. These purpose-built vans offer free care for animals in addition to spaying and neutering services.

There are currently eight WSPA-funded mobile clinics in operation, each run by local member societies in Antigua, Greece, Grenada, India, Indonesia, Mauritius, Peru and Sierra Leone .

Ambulance-like vans, which are fully equipped for routine surgery work, travel to villages and urban communities in these countries where few vets have ever ventured. One of the key aims of the clinics is to spread awareness of the importance of neutering of dogs and cats to prevent the growth of unwanted stray populations.

The groups operating the clinics often encounter problems persuading owners to understand why sterilisation is so important. This is understandable considering that most pet owners they encounter have never heard of the procedure and find it hard to see why someone should operate on their perfectly healthy animals.

Peru’s Asociacion Amigos de los Animales (AAA) President Rosario Quintanilla said the WSPA member society initially found it difficult to convince people to get their animals spayed.

As more people brought their pets to us and we explained the need for the programme, word of mouth soon ensured that the message about stray control was understood,” she said. “Now we are in the second year of the programme, many more owners are bringing their animals to the mobile clinic to be spayed or neutered, making the long-term aim of reducing the stray problem in these areas look achievable.”

First aid in Peru

WSPA became involved with the AAA‘s mobile vet programme in January 2002. The clinic concentrates its operations in the underprivileged areas of the city about 45 minutes drive from the society‘s headquarters.

Here, sterilisation takes second place to healing the sick animals and the poverty-stricken locals are offered free veterinary care for their pets. Although the clinic operates only in Lima and its surrounds, this urban area encompasses some 8 million people. This huge population leads to the Peruvian clinic‘s biggest problem - being overstretched financially. Sometimes money is so scarce that procedures cannot take place as there simply isn‘t enough medicine.

WSPA‘s funding has already made a great deal of difference to the project, enabling the clinic to be equipped with four removable metal kennels, an operating table, first aid cabinet and generator.

The Millennium Elephant Clinic

In 1999 WSPA gave funding and expertise to help set up the Millennium Elephant Clinic in the Kegalle region of Sri Lanka, which provides a refuge for up to ten former working elephants and supplies veterinary treatment to hundreds of others still in service.

Elephants have been kept captive in Sri Lanka for nearly 2000 years. Today they are primarily used for timber and tourism work. Of the 15,000 captive elephants in South-East Asia, up to 600 labour for humans in Sri Lanka. Many captive elephants were taken from the wild in Sri Lanka before legislation prohibited capture.

The Millennium Elephant Foundation (MEF) was set up on the estate of its forward thinking and passionate President Carmini Samarasinghe after she became concerned with the conditions in which these magnificent creatures worked. Elephants are very valuable in Sri Lanka but many are worked extremely hard and their keepers have only a limited understanding of veterinary care.

As well as providing veterinary treatment and a home if needed, the MEF teaches compassionate ownership, health care and education. The site also houses a museum and elephant dung paper factory and is a lifeline not only for elephants but for many local villagers whose lives revolve around these giants.

The Kegalle facility is one of the few places in Sri Lanka where visitors can wash, touch and ride the elephants without it being detrimental to their welfare. A mobile vet clinic has been established, travelling all over the island inspecting elephants currently too far away to be treated at the clinic, as well as giving trainee vets the opportunity to gain expertise in the field.

Habitat loss is mainly responsible for the decline in the population of wild elephants in South-East Asia. The current number stands at no more than 54,600 - just 10% of the current estimate for African elephants. It‘s not illegal to work elephants on the island and, at this stage, it’s impractical to ban the practice outright as the majority of working elephants would have nowhere to retire to.

Instead, WSPA and the MEF have worked with local customs, not against them, so that if the elephants are to be used for work or religious ceremonies then at least suitable veterinary care and support is on hand. Just as the United Kingdom has horse racing, so Sri Lanka has working elephants ingrained into its way of life.

The MEF now supports most of its activities through private donations, local fundraising and public visits. With WSPA‘s help, it has become an invaluable and successful stepping stone towards better animal welfare in Asia.