Dr. Sue Tornquist recently returned from a 3-week project in Liberia with Veterinarians Without Borders. She was one of a team of three veterinarians and one veterinary student on the trip. The project included a week of training Community Animal Health Workers in Zorzor, in northern Liberia, and a week of training university agriculture students in diagnostic laboratory techniques in Gbarnga in central Liberia. In addition, the team met with a number of local non-government organizations about potential further collaborations and met with the Minister of Agriculture regarding developmental plans for rebuilding Liberia’s agriculture infrastructure.
Liberia is still decimated following 14 years of a truly vicious and bloody civil war during which time thousands were killed and maimed and thousands more sought refuge in other countries. The infrastructure has not recovered since the war ended in late 2003. There is no reliable electricity and many other services have not been replaced. Most of the population lives below poverty level (average annual income is around $225-250), approximately 60% are illiterate and 85% are unemployed. Livestock are important in the lives of many Liberians with goats and chickens the main animal species seen with few pigs, sheep and cows also around. There is no veterinary school in Liberia and no resident veterinarians.
Students were very anxious to learn and gained significant skills such as physical exams, assessing the need for deworming using the FAMACHA method, animal restraint, and calculating drug dosages and understanding withdrawal time. In the laboratory training, they became familiar with fecal flotation and ova identification, gram stains, making and examining blood smears and assaying PCVs and plasma proteins. Teaching challenges included the lack of consistent electricity and the fact that when electricity was present, it was neither 110 nor 220V but often somewhere in between. Other challenges came in the form of questions such as whether it was okay to eat a dog that was killed because it was showing signs of rabies.
Dr. Tornquist will be giving a noon-time presentation with photographs of the project sometime within the next month.
