Veterinary Science in Tamil Nadu, India

By: Jennifer Eberly

Class of 2012, Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine

I am a third year food animal veterinary student at Virginia Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, and this summer I had the opportunity to spend 6 weeks in India on an infectious diseases externship. It was a wonderful, eye-opening  (and sweltering!) experience, and I could not begin to detail all of my experiences in one short entry. I would just like to describe two of my experiences however, one negative and one positive, because I feel they typify the best and worst of my experience with veterinary science in India.

The first experience, which upset me greatly, was the hygiene I observed at what is one of the best veterinary schools in India, Madras Veterinary College in Chennai, India. While the doctors were very competent clinically, I noticed that no one – doctors or students – washed their hands between patients. I watched doctors go from one parvovirus puppy to another healthy young patient with not even a hand wash with water, and there were days when the only person I observed washing their hands in a ward of 20 clinicians was myself. If I saw a table cleaned between patients it was a rare occurrence, and often exam tables would see 20 or 30 patients consecutively with no cleaning between the patients whatsoever. When I did see exam tables cleaned, it was often by the clients themselves! I once spent over an hour requesting that a puddle of fresh blood to be cleaned up from the floor of the surgery ward, while the doctors, students and janitors passed the burden of actually cleaning it up amongst themselves, and all the while they wondered why the crazy lady from America was so upset about what was really just a little bit of blood (which was being tracked all over the hospital during that hour!).

I found this extremely disturbing. Chennai is rife with infectious diseases affecting both humans and animals; the majority of these diseases are zoonotic and affect both groups. Residents avoid walking in open-toed shoes when the monsoon rains come because of the high chance of leptospira infection from the animal and human urine in the streets, and over a 1/3 of Chennai residents are still seropositive for leptospirosis despite these precautions. There is also a very large population of stray dogs in the city, which serve as a reservoir for rabies for a potential susceptible population of 4.4 million people. Why the lack of attention to basic hygienic practices to protect patients, the owners, and themselves, when the possibility of zoonotic disease spread is so likely? I do understand that the college does not have the money an equivalent institution would have in the U.S., but I also know how much soap and water costs – I bought a bar of soap at a supermarket for the equivalent of 25 cents. I never found out why there was little soap in the wards and no interest in hygiene. It was saddening and dismaying to realize that many of the animals that were visiting the wards of the college on any given day were more than likely going home with infections they did not have before visiting for treatment.

Now to a positive experience, because that last bit was pretty depressing! One of the positive experiences I had later in my externship was at the elephant camps of Mudumalai Wildlife Reserve in the Western Ghat Mountains of Tamil Nadu. These camps were very impressive – dozens of elephants would come to the camps twice a day to be fed by their mahoots (the guy who lives with the elephant and rides him through the forest). Meals of cooked rice, lentils, salt, coconut and other grains were cooked and prepared by the mahoots, and the veterinarian in charge of the park had formulated an individual recipe for each elephant according to their caloric needs and age. Wild elephants normally spend 16 hours a day foraging in the forest, but because these elephants could only turned out to the forest 8-10 hours a night, and were working to clear brush and build roads etc. during the day, supplementation of their diet was necessary for good health. The oldest elephant at one camp, a cow by the name of Rathi, had been orphaned and was consequently brought to the camp in 1942! I found it amazing that this elephant, which had outlived several of her human mahoots, had been cared for and protected by the park for over 60 years. In addition, when elephants and their mahoots visit for their meals each day, they also receive any necessary veterinary treatment or care they need from the park veterinarian. On the last day of our visit we watched the veterinarian treat an infection of the nails and toe cushion of an elephant that had been brought to the park after it was captured in the neighboring province of Kerala. It had killed 18 people in 3 villages before it was captured and relocated to the park. When thinking about this show of mercy, I can’t help contrasting it with an incident a few years ago in my hometown of Richmond, VA, when a mother let her toddler into a bear cage (!) with a lollipop at Richmond’s Maymont Park. The bear, as expected, bit the toddler on the hand that was covered with sugar from the lollipop, and the bear was consequently euthanized. It caused quite an outrage amongst Richmond residents, as most people realized that the bear was just doing what bears do, but I wonder if Americans would also be so humane to not only spare a bear or elephant that had killed 18 people but also train and actively care for it’s wellbeing? Would we make the commitment to care for a non-companion animal for 68 years? I would like to hope we would, but it is nice to know that somewhere in the world, people who do not have a lot of material wealth are still willing to make that commitment to protect animal life at great personal cost to themselves.

So those are a few of my stories from my externship to India - you are welcome to come to Blacksburg if you’d like to hear the rest over a cup of Indian tea, but be prepared – some are funny, some are saddening, but all of them are interesting!

Comments

[Dr. Suresh Pandya]

This particular experience about sanitation between patients is stray case at particular place. As clinician in charge of Veterinary polyclinic Vadodara in Gujarat State I was examining about 35 case of Parvo virus every day and I washed hand 50 times, in fact after examining each and very case, contagious or systematic.In Parvo, distemper season examination table was also cleaned and mopped with anti viral solution was. It is indeed professional obligation to make sure those treating sick animals, pet do not spread infection even by accident.