The Animals in Haiti Need Your Support We urgently need your donation to help IFAW's emergency relief teams on the ground in Haiti. Your donation will help us buy the bandages, vaccines, antibiotics and other supplies for our mobile veterinary clinic.
We have partnered with WSPA to mount a coordinated animal relief response, and our team has deployed into the devastated country.
Your donation will go directly into IFAW's Emergency Relief fund, and will be used immediately and where needed most to help the animal victims of Haiti and our Emergency Relief work around the world.
This post was filed by Laura Dobson, a UK vet that volunteered her time and expertise at IFAW’s Dog and Cat Center in Cape Town, from September through December 2009.
This post was filed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW) J.C. Bouvier who is on the ground in Port-au-Prince working with the Animal Rescue Coalition for Haiti (ARCH) teams.
In the morning, our vet met the team in the camp, and we proceeded to journey down into Port-au-Prince, Haiti...we took a brief stop at the tent city we had scheduled the afternoon to introduce our vet and ensure that the residents were ready to bring their animals to us for aid when we returned later that afternoon...
Our next stop was at the village where Dik the dog lives on Lilavois Street in the neighborhood of Bon Repos. His owner Keith was happy to see us, and our vet was able to asses his condition...when the building he was in collapsed during the earthquake...rubble must have fallen on his spine...and while he has no detectable fractures...his spine was injured...our veterinarian, Dr. Thomas, administered anti-inflamatory medication and steroids to help Dik heal...his owner thanked us and we moved on...
The day prior we had made arrangements to meet with a villager who was to bring 50 dogs to a location we had been working in...we arrived in the manner of the traditional Haitian appointment (read: 40 minutes or so after the agreed to time)...the villager didn't arrive...however there was a person who said there were six dogs in a house nearby that needed attention...
We arrived at what once had certainly been an attractive set of four houses...with wonderful mature plantings...and architecture, but had clearly been neglected over time and partially destroyed the earthquake...here we found "Lassie"...she came when called...and after a moment of scurrying around....showed us all a terrible embedded wire wound in her neck...
The team quickly set up a field station where "Lassie" was tranquilized, her wound was cleaned and prepped for stitching...once she was treated, vaccinated and given a nutritional boost...Dick Green said, "Lassie is one lucky dog, if we hadn't stopped here...she would have been dead within a week, there were maggots already in the lesion..."
We finished our work for the day and headed back to our camp...another long day...but the people whose animals we treat are genuinely grateful...
We're still working on the video featuring Dik the dog, look for it to come up on the blog soon...
This post was filed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW) J.C. Bouvier who is on the ground in Port-au-Prince working with the Animal Rescue Coalition for Haiti (ARCH) teams.
Yesterday, ARCH teams were again hard at work, helping dozens more animals from several Port-au-Prince communities...in the morning of the 29th, the ARCH coordinating team leader and IFAW Emergency Relief Manager Dick Green met with a top official from the Haitian Ministry of the Environment...while IFAW, ASPCA and AHA staff deployed into some of the harder hit areas...over the course of this 48 hour period dozens more animals were helped with vaccinations, flea baths and nutritional supplements...
Today, the 30th, the teams found a badly injured dog named Dik, whose owner says he had been in a building with a seven year old boy when the earthquake struck...although injured, Dik was able to be pulled from the rubble...When we inquired about the boy's situation, the owner said that despite every effort, the boy didn't survive...
After evaluating the Dik's injuries, a plan was set to bring full veterinary support to Dik's aid tomorrow...stay tuned for a video update on Dik's situation...
For more information on IFAW's efforts, please visit http://bit.ly/arbhaiti
This is a report from International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Campaigns Officer, Lisa Cant-Haylett, who is based in IFAW’s Cape Town, South Africa office.
Just last Thursday, Cape Town newspapers carried front page headlines warning of an outbreak of the often deadly Canine Parvovirus.
Animal welfare groups in the affected areas reported they were being forced to euthanize dozens of sick dogs, while dozens more were being treated for the disease.
As the worst affected areas are only a short distance away from Khayelitsha, where IFAW’s dog and cat project operates, it seemed logical that it would only be a matter of time before Parvo made the jump to the township where the disease would quickly spread among the many immuno-suppressed dogs. As it was, we had two puppies with Parvo brought in on Friday alone – these two pups were immediately quarantined away from the other dogs and, sadly, one of them died over the weekend.
We decided that rather than take a wait-and-see approach, a pre-emptive campaign to vaccinate dogs was essential. Jane Levinson, the clinic co-ordinator, got the ball rolling by making contact with vaccine manufacturers Intervet and distributors Norpharm. In no time they had committed to providing the much needed vaccines at greatly reduced cost, including a number of free doses.
Continue reading "IFAW South Africa: Saving township dogs from a deadly epidemic" »

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