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Speranta Shelter’s lead vet is offering UK colleagues perspective on managing imported patients and stray dog populations.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
Lead vet for Speranta, Anca Tomescu.
A Romanian vet has said clinicians from her country and the UK have much to learn from one another as her rescue centre celebrates its 30th anniversary.
The Speranta Foundation, which runs the Speranta Shelter, near Bucharest, celebrates the milestone this month.
The shelter, which has its own veterinary hospital on site, provides permanent care for around 500 dogs.
Its anniversary comes a year after Defra introduced mandatory Brucella canis testing for all dogs entering the UK from Romania.
Anca Tomescu, the lead vet for Speranta – which said it has carried out in-clinic Brucella canis testing for some time – believes there is scope for closer knowledge-sharing between Romanian and UK practice.
She said: “We wholeheartedly welcome the Defra regulations on Brucella canis testing in the UK. It is imperative that when dogs are introduced to a new country, robust health checks are carried out and vets have accurate information about disease prevalence in source populations.
“We test on-site here in Bucharest as standard and we would welcome the chance to share our protocols and case data with UK colleagues managing imported patients.”
Speranta said it has carried out sterilisations on more than 100,000 stray dogs across Romania both in-clinic and through a mobile veterinary unit.
Dr Tomescu believes the programme’s substantial body of field data on the impact of sustained, population-level sterilisation on street dog numbers over time is directly relevant to UK debate on responsible sourcing and welfare standards for imported dogs.
She added: “While UK shelters are full, simply moving dogs from one overburdened system to another isn’t the long-term answer.
“The systemic, evidence-based solution is addressing population growth at its source, through sterilisation and education. That is a preventative medicine problem as much as a welfare one and it’s an area where I think Romanian and UK vets have a lot to learn from each other.”