Congratulations to Dr Yin Zhijuan for her contribution to World Rabies Day!
ACTAsia is an Educational Partner of the WSAVA, providing professional education for veterinarians in China with the aim of improving animal welfare, through its Train the Trainer network. One of its leaders, Senior Veterinary Trainer Dr Yin, has once more been focusing her efforts on rabies control in the run up to this year’s World Rabies Day (September 28).
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Each year, since 2019, Dr Yin has returned from Nanning, the capital city of Guangxi province, to her home village to run a project for ‘Zero Rabies by 2025’ with support from ACTAsia. Guangxi is a ‘hotspot’ for rabies outbreaks and many of the human rabies cases are sadly in children. The months of July and August typically see a high incidence of humans with rabies.
At the beginning of August 2021, Dr Yin took two of her colleagues; Ms Liu Shunlong and Ms Zhang Zhehui, from veterinary hospitals in Nanning, and set to the task of vaccinating 200 dogs and cats. Companies sponsored the vaccines with local governments also supportive of the project, lending their veterinary stations in each local village to ensure people had somewhere to bring their animals. At one of these stations in Liuzhou city, more than 100 dogs were vaccinated.
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Dr Yin took the opportunity to give advice to owners on a range of issues from parasites to other vaccinations to simple wound treatments. She also shared other useful information with local veterinarians, including the WSAVA Global Pain Guidelines, the Feline Grimace Scale and other up to date examples of best practice in animal welfare.
WSAVA President Dr Siraya Chunekamrai says:
[blockquote]With Asia one of the regions of the world hardest hit by rabies, it’s great to see Dr Yin, with the backing of ACTAsia, running this project. We hope that her example will inspire other veterinary professionals around the world to participate in initiatives to control this disease which still kills around 60,000 humans a year, in addition to countless animals.[/blockquote]