Rebecca Lulay (L) and Ariana Borba (R), Class of 2017, spent their summer tackling the big job of planning the annual IVSA service trip to Nicaragua.
Each year, a team of OSU veterinary students, veterinary technicians, and veterinarians undertake a two-week service trip to the island of Ometepe, Nicaragua. Because the island has no resident veterinarian, the people of Ometepe rely on OSU to bring much-needed care to their livestock and pets.
The Ometepe trip is sponsored by the OSU International Veterinary Student Association, and they do everything from fundraising, to transportation arrangements, to clinic organization. It is no small task.
This year Ariana Borba, IVSA Secretary, and Rebecca Lulay, IVSA Co-President, began serious planning for the trip in April, and worked through the summer to pull everything together.
This was Borba’s second year on the service trip. “I really, really enjoyed the first year, so I joined the IVSA and was one of the main planners for the trip this year,” she says. “I volunteered because Becca [Lulay] and I were the only ones who had been before, except for two fourth-years, but they were just planning on doing surgery the whole time, so they needed us to oversee the whole rest of the clinic.”
Moving forty-three people, and hundreds of pounds of supplies, to an island in the middle of a lake, in a third-world country, has unusual challenges. “The airline allows one checked bag and one carry-on, so everyone fills their checked bag with 50 pounds of supplies,” says Borba. “That causes problems with customs, because they search through some of the bags, and they don’t like us bringing in expired drugs. The problem is all our drugs are donated and people mostly donate expired drugs – they are still good but can’t be used in the U.S.” This year they lost three bags of supplies, including most of their flea and tick medication.
For students who are working hard to bring as much care as possible to needy animals, the logistical challenges are very frustrating. “It’s hard to understand,” says Borba, “The fact that we bring these supplies to help them, and then they take it. They even kept one of our microscopes: it was donated, and it was beautiful, and we loved it and they took it.”
Borba and Lulay were also responsible for organizing the setup of the clinic, and creating schedules for each of the care stations. “There are six different stations in the clinic and everyone switches in the afternoon, so we had to plan 12 schedules.”
Despite some challenges, Borba recommends the experience to other veterinary students. “The people are so thankful and appreciative,” she says. “Here, if you go to the vet and have to wait 20 minutes, you think that’s a lot. But they come at seven in the morning and will sit all day long. Then when you bring them their animal in the afternoon, and say ‘I’m so sorry you’ve been here since morning,’ they say ‘No it’s fine. Thank you so much.’”
Borba also values the learning opportunities she had: “I gained a lot of skills I can use in my future,” she says. In particular “diagnostic skills; we calculated a lot of drug doses, that was very helpful.” She also benefited from helping with surgeries. “Going into surgery, I was super duper nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Even though the way we do surgery here is totally different than down there, now I have some idea what to. That’s true with everything else too; now I have done plenty of physical exams and can work through it.”
This year, the team from OSU treated more than 900 animals. Borba estimates about 300 were small animals (dogs, cats, and one rabbit) The rest were horses, pigs, cattle, sheep and goats.
