Making life better for working animals abroad

SPANA (The Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad) is devoted to improving the welfare of working animals in the world’s poorest countries. Its vision is a world in which every working animal is treated with compassion and lives a life free from suffering. The charity most commonly works with horses, mules, donkeys, camels and oxen, all of which are relied on by poor communities to carry out work such as transport and ploughing.

How does it work?

SPANA carries out its vital work through a combination of free on-the-spot veterinary care, education and animal welfare training. The charity works to educate both veterinary students and the owners of working animals, as well as teaching children the importance of treating animals with respect and compassion.

How we’re helping

In June 2015, the Petplan Charitable Trust awarded a £4,760 grant to SPANA for the establishment of a new Clinical Skills Centre in Senegal, part of a wider plan to establish such centres across Africa and the Middle East. These centres enable the charity to promote long-term change through education and training for the owners of working animals.

The centres provide a place where undergraduate students can practise basic veterinary skills such as suturing, running simple lab tests and reaching diagnoses. Students practise first on realistic models and then on live animals, building up their confidence, psychomotor skills and a clear understanding of anatomy and pathology as they go. In addition to the latest centre set up in Senegal, other recent centres have been established in Jordan, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

Facilities like these were not previously available to these students, but SPANA now has seven Clinical Skills Centres, teaching around 676 students. The Senegal centre is, in many ways, the most significant of the charity’s centres, as it has a far greater reach than the others; Senegal Veterinary University is the only one of its kind in the region, so it draws in veterinary students from fourteen African countries. When these students return to their home countries, they take the skills they’ve learned with them, widening SPANA’s reach across a large part of French-speaking Africa and helping many more animals – and the people who depend on them – in the process.

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