We arrived here Saturday, but have had sketchy internet and electricity. We are working with Dr. Kelly Crowdis, who works with CVM. Kelly has lived here for 7 years and knows many people and how to go anywhere. Sunday we packed and traveled about 5 hours south from Port au Prince, the capital city. We went to a very rural community called Source Baptiste to do work Monday.
Source Baptiste has never had any vet work done before, but they do have a vet agent (person trained by a veterinarian) living in their community, named Acky. Acky is an amazing young man with great foresight and visions for a better future in Haiti. He is finishing his studies in agronomy now and hopes to go to vet school in Cuba someday, as Haiti does not have a vet school. Having Acky with us was key to a successful day.
We worked on 175 animals total. It was a mixture of cows, goats, pigs, mules and donkeys and a couple of dogs and cats. We vaccinated and dewormed everyone. Castrated a few goats and pigs and worked on a vaginal prolapse on a cow and a few other medical conditions. The mules and donkeys were scared and hard to handle. Their jobs are hauling goods to and from the market as well as the owners. They are seen as a tool and are often less valued than the food producing animals. Overall their condition was ok. Somewhat thin, hooves were good, no saddles sores currently although there were signs that there have been. We did dental work on 3 mules. One was 12 years old and will benefit greatly from what we did, having very overgrown 306 and 406.
On Tuesday we went up the road about 25 minutes to another community. We had a harder time persuading people to cialis buy have us work on their animals. They did not know Acky and weren’t sure what we were doing. They also have never seen veterinary work.. In the end we did work on about 30 animals. 5 of these being mules and one horse. This was a good example of the difficulty with projects early on when there isn’t a trusted member of the community encouraging it.
Tomorrow we will work in an area that has had minimal vet care, but does have a vet agent. There are supposed to be many horses and mules and several mules to castrate.
Judy Batker, DVM