23 Dec 2022
A year after being hunted by the Taliban, young vet settles into practice life in West Yorkshire.
James Westgate
Job TitleA young vet has expressed her heartfelt gratitude to all those who helped her escape Afghanistan and start a new life in the UK.
Haida – not her real name – was being hunted by the Taliban and living in hiding in Kabul when she first contacted Vet Times for help in November last year.
But thanks to a combined effort involving individual vets, one of the country’s biggest corporate groups, and an international animal charity, her long journey has finally come to a happy end just before Christmas, when she arrived to the warmest of welcomes at a practice in West Yorkshire.
Aireworth Vets in Keighley is where Haida received that welcome and where she has found a new home, new friends and a new job, which she hopes will lead to her resuming the veterinary career she was forced to abandon in her homeland.
She said: “I am just so happy that I am finally here in the UK. I do not have the words to express the gratitude to all those who have helped me get here.
“I want to say thank you to all readers of Vet Times for their offers of help – particularly Graham Duncanson, who helped me from the very start and did not stop supporting me.”
She added: “I also want to thank Heather [Armstrong] at the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust, who has been like a second mother to me, and also VetPartners for helping me get my visa to the UK, for supporting me financially and for giving me somewhere to live and work – I will always be grateful for this help.
“And, of course, I want to thank the team here at Aireworth Vets, who have done so much to make me feel welcome and helped me settle in.”
Once Vet Times highlighted her plight more than 12 months ago, offers of support and assistance poured into our newsdesk, but Haida still had no way of getting out of Afghanistan until the intervention of British vet Graham Duncanson, who managed to secure a visa through a contact with Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust.
After a dramatic escape with her family to Islamabad in Pakistan, Haida used her Gambian visa to travel to the west African country, where she worked for the trust while studying for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam, which she needed to pass to secure a visa to the UK.
During this time, she was able to put her veterinary skills to good use at the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust’s new centre in Makasutu.
Haida added: “The Gambia is a loving country and I cannot describe the debt I feel to that country and to the people I was working with at the trust, who are like my family, and I miss them so much already.
“They gave me so much help and useful experience working with the animals, and made me so welcome. I will never forget them.”
And it was while she was in The Gambia that VetPartners got in touch to offer the support Haida needed to complete her journey.
She said: “VetPartners sponsored the visa to the UK and sorted out all the paperwork, they paid for the IELTS exam. The company has just given me so much support and help to come to the UK.
“And when they got in touch in November to tell me my visa had finally been approved, it was the happiest. I couldn’t help crying, I was so, so happy.”
Haida arrived in the UK on 10 December and is now settling into British practice life with the team at Aireworth Vets, where she is shadowing the clinical team ahead of her RCVS entrance exam.
Having earned her veterinary degree at Kabul University Veterinary Science Faculty – an institution not on the RCVS accredited vet school list – Haida will have to sit the college exam to be able to practise as a veterinary surgeon in the UK, something she expects to do in May this year. It will not be an easy task, but having come so far already, her two biggest supporters are confident she will be able to overcome this final hurdle and make a new life for herself in the UK.
Graham Duncanson said: “I have been a vet for 56 years and have had the privilege to work with hundreds of veterinarians. Haida is a marvellous character. She is one of the best. She is a credit to her family, her country and to the profession.
“I wish her the best of luck for her future here in the UK and also for the RCVS exam in May.”
Heather Armstrong added: “Haida has become my third daughter. She is a lovely girl, full of fun, feisty, kind, determined and very brave, and as I keep telling her, if our positions were reversed, I know she would have done the same for me.
“My father used to say that we cannot all change the world, but we should all do our best for individuals in need of help, whether they be humans or animals, and by doing that, the world will change.
“Many people made this happen and let’s all hope she continues to be happy.”
