Regular readers of my blog know that even though I retired from veterinary practice three years ago, I’ve remained active in the veterinary community. I still author the bimonthly “The Vet Is In” column for Catster magazine, and I still pop into Dr. Soboroff’s practice, New York Cat Hospital, every now and then to visit him and Dr. Sheheri and…
Today is World Rabies Day. With a mortality rate of 99.9%, rabies is the deadliest disease in the world. Human cases of rabies are rare in the U.S., but in underdeveloped parts of the world (Asia and Africa in particular), rabies kills approximately 60,000 people annually, the majority being children under the age of 15. Most cases result from…
Mission Rabies Ghana, February 2020; what an adventure!! Let’s wrap this puppy up with a blog post. The tentative schedule this morning was: breakfast at 8:00, departure from Lake Bosomtwe at 9:00. I packed my suitcase last night except for the few things I would need in the morning, so I was pretty ready to go. I set the alarm…
There was a feeling of excitement in the air this morning as we all convened for breakfast. Today is the day we wrap up our project. At breakfast, we were assigned our given areas that we were going to cover, and we were also given an important statistic, namely, how many dogs we needed to vaccinate in our area in…
Our assignment this morning was a region named Oyoko. It’s a small farming community, about a 40 minute drive from our base. We had five of us, and Adusei said he was feeling a bit under the weather, so the plan was to split up into two groups. Adusei and I would staff the static clinic, while Charlotte, our driver…
Today was a nice, mellow day. We were assigned a village called Piase. Last year, the static clinic that they set up in this area was very busy. Sure enough, our morning was busy as well, but again, in a very feast-or-famine manner. We’d sit for 20 minutes with absolutely nothing to do, and then three people would appear, one…
Tuesday has always been the most nondescript day of the week, and this applies to Ghana as well, apparently, because today really bordered on being “routine”. I guess I’ve really grown accustomed to things here, because objectively it was amazing as usual. I had an egg sandwich for breakfast, and then went to base camp as usual to load up…
Alas, the lovely weekend has ended, and it’s back to work again. We had breakfast, and then drove to our base camp as usual to restock our bags with supplies. I started the day with my second post-exposure rabies vaccine, due to that dog bite I received last Thursday. Ironically, the dog bite I received saved me a little money…
After a busy (but fun) week of vaccinating dogs, we were rewarded with a bit of free time. Originally we were going to do some horseback riding on Saturday and then drive into Kumasi to see the huge market, but we were told that Sunday was probably not the best day to see the market, as this is a very…
Today marked the end of the first week. I woke up this morning with my bite wound looking great. There was no oozing overnight, no swelling, no pain, nothing. I shaved and showered, and put on a band-aid, and that was that. Tomorrow I don’t think I’ll even need a bandage on it. This morning at our base, we stocked…
After meeting at the base camp, we packed our bags and headed out fully stocked. Again we detoured at the little market, and I got to see Avocado Lady again. It’s my morning ritual. Today was a strange day. I was initially told that our group would be heading back to the static point clinic that we operated on Tuesday,…
Today we went out to a very remote area today, a village called Adagya, and set up a static point clinic at another community maternity center. Our team was me and Adusei, Charlotte, and a new Community Health Officer (CHO) named Naomi. And our driver, Moses, of course. We all met up at the base, loaded our bags, and headed…
Day 2 started out well; excellent breakfast, then, off we went to the Mission Rabies Ghana Health Center, to load up our bags, meet with our teams, and hit the road. I saw Jo there testing out one of the megaphones, and I asked her if she could do her very realistic impression of how a dog with rabies barks.…
After a restless night trying to sleep (jet lag plus excitement), the alarm went off at 5:10 a.m. I shaved, showered, put on my Mission Rabies t-shirt, scarfed down breakfast with the rest of the gang, were given our special phones with the Mission Rabies app, and then off we went, to the Health Center (our base camp) where all…
Today we set our sights for Lake Bosomtwe! According to my Google maps, it’s about 5 hours by car, although I heard that this depends on what route you take and what shape the roads are in. Either way, it should be an adventurous trip. Driving is often a good way to get to see and know a country. After…