MBOMBELA – For the first time in South Africa, dogs and cats in rural communities can be treated without having to leave the area, thanks to Mpumalanga’s new mobile animal clinics.
The province has acquired eight new minibuses and three trucks equipped to perform sterilisations, deworming, inoculations and any other clinical services in rural villages around the province.
“The province needs these mobile clinics,” says Dr Moses Mabunda, deputy director of Mpumalanga’s Veterinary Hospital in Mbombela. “Not only do people in rural villages fail to sterilise their animals, but numerous cases of rabies have been reported in areas like Bushbuckridge.”
According to Mabunda, hundreds of stray dogs and wild cats have appeared as a result of the lack of neutered animals. “It’s the people’s responsibility to sterilise their animals but most of them do not have the money to come into town, let alone pay vet’s bills.”
Each “clinic” is geared with a collapsible operating table, a fridge for medicine, a television to educate people about the necessity of sterilisation, a generator for electricity in areas where there is none and a siren to inform people that they can bring their pets for treatment.
Since the programme started in Mpumalanga in 2010, 50 more mobile clinics have been launched across the country.
They do not operate in areas where they can overlap with private veterinarians or the SPCA. “Because we offer this service for a very cheap price, sometimes for free, we don’t want to take away private vets’ business,” says Mabunda.
Only registered vets or vet nurses may perform the clinical procedures and operate the vehicles. However, the region is faced with a serious lack of state veterinarians.
He says each of the province’s 18 municipalities should have at least one registered vet doing clinical work. Instead, there are only five in the whole province.
“This is a huge problem. As soon as a student vet graduates they go overseas or start a private practice. They don’t work for the state, even though the salary is almost more than that of a private practice.”
Except for full bursaries to veterinary schools, the government has conjured a solution to the problem, which might take effect in 2016.
“In medicine, before a student graduates they have to work at a state hospital for at least a year,” says Mabunda. “The government now wants to pilot a programme where all veterinary students also have to work for the state for a year. This way we will have staff every year.”
Since the province has a shortage of state vets, the mobile clinics cannot operate as often as they would like to. He says they visit villages and informal settlements once every few weeks.
Those who would like to partake in the mobile clinics, who want to apply for bursaries or vets who want to apply for state clinical work, can do so by visiting the human-resource section of the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and Land and Environmental Affairs and ask for Dr Lucas Cele.
