Volunteer vet’s World Spay Day mission in Malawi

World Spay Day gives an opportunity for animal welfare organisations, vets, nurses, rescue and rehoming centres and pretty much anyone involved in animal welfare education to spread the word about the benefits of sterilisation.

However, in many places, convincing owners about the benefits of spaying or neutering can be an uphill battle.

I have worked in a variety of places – from England to Thailand – and I am currently working in Malawi, where a lot of the arguments and concerns are common.

The benefits

Sterilising female dogs early lowers the risk of them developing mammary cancer later in life. Spaying a female also means eliminating the chance of development of pyometra, which is an infected womb that can quickly turn into a life-threating clinical condition.

I’ve performed pyometra surgery in many countries. In England, I had the benefit of having an ultrasound machine and blood analysis to help aid my diagnosis and tailor my treatment for each particular patient, but in other countries it comes down to trusting the clinical signs and heading straight for surgery.

Castrating male dogs eliminates the risk of testicular cancer as the testicles are removed during the operation. They also have a much lower risk of developing prostate cancer, infections and abnormal growth. We usually see less of a desire for these males to roam and chase females, and some aggressive behaviours can quieten down.

Venereal tumours

Both male and female dogs in Malawi can suffer from a sexually transmitted disease called a transmissible venereal tumour (TVT). This can be debilitating and grows on the sexual organs of both sexes – I have seen dogs put to sleep because of the severity of the tumours.

Luckily, we have a treatment that can be given weekly for these cases that, often, can rid the dog of any signs of tumour and bring back a good quality of life. Obviously, this tumour will spread through the population less if there are more sterilised animals, as the drive for reproduction will be low.

Most importantly, sterilisation stops the creation of yet more puppies (and kittens). In countries like Malawi, where there is risk of serious zoonotic diseases, especially rabies, fewer free-roaming animals on the streets means less opportunity for the spread of a virus like rabies.

Making a weekend of it

The fantastic team from Mission Rabies is arriving, for the second year in a row, to conduct a huge mass-vaccination campaign in the area of Blantyre to continue the fight against rabies and work towards the eradication of this horrible, fatal disease.

The Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) and Mission Rabies joined efforts not just for World Spay Day itself, but also hosted a world spay weekend with the fantastic Blantyre SPCA in a Blantyre village called Mbayani.

We had help from Richard and Mwamba, two fantastic vets who travelled down from Lilongwe and Zambia respectively. We also had the amazing Mission Rabies Malawi team to help run the anaesthetics, registration and general handling of all our patients – great teamwork.

Street team

Prior to starting the work, we drove through the village announcing the free sterilisation days and took the opportunity to answer questions from local people and address concerns. This work was done with the Malawi Rabies team so many of the people in the village recognised the MR shirts from last year’s vaccination drive.

Obvious concerns from owners had to do with long-held beliefs female dogs should have puppies before sterilisation (which is untrue) and concerns surrounding anaesthesia – not so different from the concerns of owners in England.

Even in field surgery programmes – there is no exception – we use the same gold-standard surgical technique we teach at our training centres in India and Thailand. We also use anaesthetic protocols that are tried and true and very predictable.

Back to school

For the three days we worked out of local classrooms offering a view of the village below. We held our drive on the weekend as it is usually the children of the villages who bring the dogs for sterilisation/vaccination. Most dogs in Blantyre have a home/owner, though are classed as free-roaming as they have access to the whole village and inevitably make their territories.

Children started walking their dogs up to us once we arrived and we quickly had them registered and marked ready for surgery. These dogs all had collars and leads fashioned from what could be found in the village – such as wire, cloth and chains.

The children were curious and stayed most of the day, even after their dogs had recovered from surgery, to peer in through the open windows and watch what we were doing. The dogs were generally very sweet and treated with care by the children and were walked home after their operations. All dogs were given rabies vaccinations, along with pain relief and flea/parasite treatment.

To the extreme

Some of the dogs had mammary tumours, a previously mentioned risk with unspayed females. These were removed at the same time. We also had a few infected wombs, a couple of TVT cases, which we started treatment for, and numerous cases of skin complaints and fleas.

We battled extremes from blazing heat to a day of torrential rain coming in sideways through the windows – the skies so dark we needed to operate by torchlight.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience to be able to spread the word about responsible pet ownership and the benefits of sterilisation. This also gave us an opportunity to start to get the word out about our big WVS and Mission Rabies teams that will be joining me later in April and May for the huge vaccination drive against rabies, and for our huge May sterilisation drive in which we aim to spay/neuter 1,000 dogs.