World Spay Day - Malawi

For the last month Kathleen and I have been residing in the capital of Malawi, a sleepy town called Lilongwe where we have been volunteering at the LSPCA – the Lilongwe Society for the Protection and Care of Animals, an organization that is working on multiple levels within Malawi. Some are at the national level: They are currently working on an EU initiative on tightening guidelines for Animal Welfare at slaughterhouses and Better Training For Safer Food. They have helped the Malawi government start enforcing the animal cruelty laws and now the first convictions are trying to stop the roadside puppy mill trade. They are helping with fighting the poaching and ivory trade in the region. This organization also helps on the local level: There is community outreach done where LSPCA education officer(s) visit primary schools to teach children about animal welfare. They run a clinic where clients can come with their animals for veterinary care and vaccinations. There is a charge for this service. They also perform free spay/neuter and vaccination clinics in the poor parts of the city. They also do a monthly large animal clinic and are hoping to soon start a program for donkeys to teach people how to take better and more humane care of them.

Malawi has really stoked Kathleen's fire. She has on numerous occasions claimed this is her “happy place”. She is involved in many of the projects going on at LSPCA and has fallen in love with her typical “day at work”. In the mornings she has been teaching at the primary schools how to provide the basic needs of animals and the 5 Freedoms of animal welfare: Freedom from Fear, Freedom to express natural behavior, Freedom from discomfort, Freedom from hunger and thirst, and Freedom from pain, injury, and disease. She also teaches a bit on animal behavior, rabies awareness, signs and symptoms, and tips on prevention. In the afternoons, she often visits the Animal Kindness Clubs at the schools, encouraging the children to continue learning and practicing compassion towards animals. There they use dance, poetry and debate as medium to celebrate and teach animal welfare objectives. Kathleen has also been briefed on the animal welfare slaughterhouse legislation and plans on visiting slaughterhouses later this month. Most recently, Kathleen has joined the Triathlon Committee and is taking the lead on behalf of LSPCA on fundraising for the event which will take place in April.

Kathleen teaching Animal Welfare

 

My role is more simple. I am here as a veterinarian. I help run the hospital along with the resident South African vet Robyn McCann. Since we are staying at the accommodation on the shelter grounds I also am the after hours emergency vet. Every Tuesday and Wednesday the vets go out into the communities around Lilongwe and do a free spay/neuter clinic. Rabies vaccination and some basic veterinary care is also provided. These are very poor areas and the conditions are primitive. Basically we are doing surgery on folding tables under some trees in a dirt square. People will be lined up with their dogs on chains, wires, and ropes hoping to get them neutered or spayed. The majority of the dogs are medium size short hair brown dogs – the generic Malawi mutt. They are pretty adorable but many of them are not socialized and they often get into fights amongst each other as they wait.

Publicity banner

 

This last week was World Spay Day which the LSPCA stretched into 3 days to maximize the effect. Our good friend and vet colleague Amanda McNabb heard about what was going on and with less then 2 weeks notice managed to completely change her work and bike race schedule, gather up 2 suitcases of donated medical supplies and donations for an orphanage Kathleen has visited, and through a GoFundMe campaign raised a bunch of money for supplies toward stocking the shelter. We were incredibly impressed with the generosity of our friends and veterinary community that helped out. Drugs from multiple clinics as far away as Wisconsin helped give what they could. Amanda showed up on Monday, did a ton of surgeries for 3 days, held the hospital down for a day while Kathleen and I went to renew our visas, and then went and enjoyed the spectacle of the first Malawi Veterinary Association meeting since 2013 before leaving the next day. It was fun having a friend come visit again so now Amanda is tied with Dan Sears and Seth Wolpin for meeting up with us twice during World Tour (though Seth still has the lead since he spent a grueling 3 months with us hiking across the Himalaya). Over the course of the three days 221 animals were spayed and neutered. Each day there would be a couple of hundred dogs waiting as we pulled in. Many people stood in the hot sun for a full day or more hoping to get the surgery performed.  The recovery building was piled up with dogs waking up from anesthesia.

Standing in line all day                                     

Recovery - this building actually collapsed the next week

Dogs recovering from anesthesia                    

 

There were also vets from Uganda (the head of LSPCA Richard Ssuna), South Africa (Robyn), England, Zambia, and a Finnish vet that lives and works in India. On the first day we even had two Dutch vet students drop by and we rapidly put them to work. A large group of Malawi veterinary para-proffesionals (vet techs and assistant equivalents) helped us out by monitoring patients during surgery and recovery, inducing and prepping for surgery, and in helping with the registration and crowd control.  Kathleen used her old human clinical medicine skills and found that dogs aren't that much different to monitor.  Dozens and dozens of children would gather and watch. At the end of the days they would get very excited when cameras were taken out wanting to get their picture taken. They always loved to look at the screen to see themselves. High fives were also popular and Amanda taught some of them how to do exploding fist bumps.

Elona and Amanda doing surgery      

Me yelling at Amanda to work faster

The children were fascinated            

The team                                           

 

There were some sad moments and some great moments. I had to put down a suspected rabies dog that was hypersalivating, neurologic, and acting strange according to the owner. In the afternoon of the third day I saw two elderly men sitting on a wall with their dogs. They had been waiting for a long time. At least all day if not since the previous day. I found that they were number 2 and 3 on the waiting list for females to be spayed. I promised them that I would get their animals done next. I injected the next 3 females with xylazine to sedate them. After I did this I would place a piece of tape on their head with their estimated weight. One of the grandpa's dogs did not want the tape, freaked out, slipped out of its leash, and took off running. The dog ducked under a fence and disappeared with the poor man chasing after her in the hot sun. I was really bummed. I had wanted to help him and now his drugged dog was loose in the town. Fortunately after about 20 minutes he came back with his dog reattached to the rope. The dog was still able to walk but just barely. 40 minutes later he had a spayed dog and everyone was happy.

Sedating dogs with xylazine

 

We want to give a HUGE thanks to all our friends and colleagues who helped out with supporting World Spay Day. This type of activity has a real impact on peoples lives here. Rabies kills a scary number of people here. A regional hospital where Kathleen and I were at for flood relief had 10 confirmed rabies deaths last year and they thought that there were many more in the villages where people did not seek health care. In Lilongwe 2 weeks ago a woman and 4 month old baby were attacked by stray dogs and the mother was killed. This also is not an uncommon occurrence. Vaccinating and trying to control the dog population helps save human lives also. Many Malawi at spay day thanked me profusely and that thanks goes back to the sponsors that helped make it happen. As they say here, Zikomo!