16/08/2024
Equine vet and student team volunteering visit to Egypt
Helen Braid, one of the vets from our equine practice team, and four Liverpool final year vet students have recently returned following a 3 week trip to the Animal Care in Egypt - ACE hospital based in Luxor. Helen and the students (Alex, George, India and Rhiannon) volunteered their services at Animal Care in Egypt as part of our final year student electives programme. Our hospital and practice team regularly volunteer their equine veterinary expertise to support a number of different UK and overseas charities. It is great that we are able to help benefit the health and welfare of horses in the UK and overseas and also provide our students with the opportunity to see veterinary care from a different perspective. Please see below for a summary of the trip. If you would like to donate and learn more about what this wonderful charity does, go to: www.ace-egypt.org.uk.
Following Luke Edwards’ visit to the charity last year, we set up a new elective for our veterinary students for 2024 (an elective is a three week clinical placement that the students choose to do at the very end of their degree). Helen and four of our final year students flew out to Luxor (Helen had a brief interlude in Cairo on the way down!). The team were based at Animal Care in Egypt’s hospital in Luxor. Animal Care in Egypt (ACE) is a UK-based charity and their veterinary clinic has a team of highly skilled Egyptian veterinary surgeons and support staff running a busy multi-disciplinary hospital. The vets at ACE work to very high evidence-based standards and provide excellent veterinary care to their patients. The charity also provide educational programmes for Egyptian vets, locals, school children and tourists.
The visit also coincided with a major heatwave with Helen and the student team performing their veterinary duties in sweltering temperatures reaching 49C degrees some days and not dropping below 36C at night. The donkey and horse inpatients and outpatients kept them busy, with patients coming and going in a variety of very different and interesting methods of transport (and very willing and well-trained donkey and horse passengers!).
The team treated many wounds, battling with the local fly population (whose bites hurt!) to keep these wounds clean and free from developing maggots and infection. With much flushing and wound care from the team at the clinic, alongside painkillers and short courses of antibiotics, these wounds quickly started to heal with excellent results.
We are so lucky to have easily-accessible vaccinations against tetanus for our UK horses – unfortunately, this is not the case in many parts of the world, including Egypt. As a vet with 11 years experience, Helen has been privileged to have only seen three cases of tetanus in the UK, which is a reflection of how successful our vaccination programme is in this country. Within three weeks in Egypt, she witnessed four cases of tetanus in donkeys – some recovered but even with intensive care, sadly some did not make it. Rabies is also seen in Egypt, with donkeys and horses mainly being infected following bites from infected dogs. Sadly, this is a fatal disease and also provides a challenge for vet teams when providing care for animals who may potentially be infected, as any bite or scratch should be considered as a potential risk requiring a prophylactic course of rabies vaccinations, as there is no cure for rabies and the disease is fatal. We are incredibly privileged in the UK to live in a country where rabies is eradicated (it has been eradicated in the UK since 1922), so having to consider rabies as a potential risk was a new experience for our students!
There was never a dull moment – sarcoids, kick wounds, leg fractures….. you name it. But they did get the opportunity to do a bit of local sight seeing in this amazing country before heading back home (as the heatwave also ended!).
Well done to Helen and the student team (Alex, George, India and Rhiannon) and a big thank you to Animal Care Egypt and all of their wonderful staff for their support and hard work. Please take a look at the fantastic work they perform and help to support them if you can (www.ace-egypt.org.uk).
