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News: Volunteer Veterinary Work in Kosovo
Posted by: JimEdwards on Apr 23, 2006 - 09:08 PM
WVDay
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By Petra Lowen and Toni-Maree McInnes
UK based Kiwi veterinarians
Animals can often become the forgotten victims in war and civil unrest. In the midst of much human suffering they can easily be overlooked. This is the case in Kosovo which has been administered as a UN-NATO protectorate (UNMIK: United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo) since June 1999 due to the ethnic conflict between the Albanian and Serbian populations. Consequently, there is a high international presence especially in Prishtina comprising UN, military (KFOR) and police as Kosovo endeavours to attain formal independence from Serbia.
 There are hundreds of thousands of street dogs roaming Kosovo. During the war many formed intimidating packs to survive and as a result much of the human population is fearful of dogs. Currently mass shootings are used in a futile effort to control numbers and the highways are littered with the bodies of dogs hit by cars. With all the turmoil in the region, animal welfare is not a high priority.
Visit the Kosovo Dog Shelter website.
We arrived in April 2005 to what we had thought would be a sole four week stay to help out in the only dog shelter in Kosovo (Qendra Kosovare per Strehim dhe Trajnimin e Qeneve Endacak) . Whilst there are various organisations within Kosovo trying to aid the human refugees, no other organisations are currently active (to our knowledge) in assisting the animal victims.
The shelter, a registered NGO, had been operational for one year and was established by two Albanian Kosovars Florim and Nexhmedin. Having no formal funding, these two family men finance the shelter using half of their monthly salaries supplemented by a very small income from offering boarding facilities and charging a small fee for taking in dogs which stray onto UN and Army bases.
Florim and Nexh have a great vision. They aim for the shelter to become a model for the future providing an education centre where school groups and the like can learn about animal care and welfare. Here a controlled environment can be provided to allow interaction and socialisation with the dogs so aiming to alter local attitudes towards dogs.
Impressed with what they had accomplished so far with limited funds and no previous experience, we soon became determined to do all we could to help them.
When we first arrived the shelter housed 56 dogs and 17 cats., the smaller dogs were keep in an indoor kennel facility with concrete flooring whilst the larger dogs were housed in outdoor gravel runs. The cats were all living harmoniously in a room inside the main building.
Now a year later we are returning for our third visit to Kosovo. A lot has changed in the last twelve months thanks to our combined efforts. The shelter now houses over eighty friendly happy healthy dogs. The outdoor areas have been concreted, roofed and wind-proofed thanks to money, materials and labour donated by companies and members of the International community within Kosovo. Many of the cats have been re-homed and a cattery with outdoor access is under construction for those who remain.
The animal adoption rate which had previously been near zero has increased thanks to raised public awareness and several dogs have even made it to new homes abroad.
Infectious disease is always a problem in animal shelters and our veterinary training has been put to good use in disease treatment and prevention. Shortly after our 2005 arrival we had to deal with an outbreak of Distemper within the shelter (the disease had been introduced by a dog admitted a week before we arrived). None of the strays were vaccinated and with a lack of knowledge about infectious disease new arrivals were not being quarantined. We immediately set up a quarantine area outside the shelter walls for new arrivals, treated and isolated the sick dogs, put barrier nursing procedures in place and sourced vaccinations for the healthy dogs. A year later there have been no repeat outbreaks as all the animals are vaccinated and quarantined on arrival before entering the shelter proper which is sectioned with foot baths between areas to help prevent spread of disease. Any animals who appear unwell are immediately considered infectious until proven otherwise and placed in isolation.
In April 2005 we had to set up our “vet clinic” almost from scratch with only a few surgical instruments left by the Norwegian KFOR dog unit and some donated medications we had bought with us from the UK.
The rest of the equipment and drugs we needed had to be sourced within Kosovo. The number of medications imported here for animals is very limited and we had (and continue) to rely on human substitutes. This made our job difficult at times as some of the pharmaceuticals we need are not used in humans. One of the most important of these being the drug used to humanely euthanasia sick and injured animals.
 A year later and the clinic is still primitive by Western standards with no gas anesthesia or diagnostic facilities and intermittent water and power supplies. As per any other veterinary patient, each of the animals has a medical file in which vaccinations, worming, flea treatments, weights and any medical treatments and procedures are recorded. At neutering each cat or dog is permanently identified by a tattoo in his/her ear, with the letters QKS and for the dogs a unique id number.Despite a constant struggle, thanks to a combination of donations from veterinarians outside Kosovo and fundraising it is stocked with the drugs and equipment we need to neuter and care for the shelter inhabitants.
Word of the clinic has spread and when in Kosovo we are often called upon to treat owned animals. This is a tricky situation as we do not want to take paid work from the local veterinarians who struggle to make a living. Many local vets have little experience in the surgical and medical treatment of companion animals and are unable to source the medications required to treat some illnesses, so we cannot turn the more challenging cases away.
During our first visit we teamed up with the American Army vet to assist the Municipality train local veterinarians in private practice to neuter dogs. The programme ran for a week. We assisted on the first day demonstrating the anesthetic and surgical technique on two of our shelter dogs before the group practiced on cadavers.
The programme was definitely a step in the right direction however in practice most dogs in Kosovo are only loosely owned (if at all) and people (including local veterinarians) do not believe in the need to neuter even if they could afford to pay for the procedure.
Our vision for the future is to continue to assist the shelter and to tackle the Kosovo street dog population through the initiation of a neuter and release programme.
This will only be possible with Government cooperation and the assistance of larger animal aid organisations to assist with funding and logistics.
Visit the Kosovo Dog Shelter website.
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