Veterinarians Without Borders
by Michael Schaffer

I’ve written a lot about how ideas of pet health mirror ideas about human health–from nutrition to education to, especially, veterinary medicine. Though it’s great news for dogs and cats and other critters, the change in vet medicine sometimes makes humans feel a little anxious as they ponder how some American pets have access to medical equipment unavailable to humans in even non-impoverished overseas countries, or as we grapple with what it means that some pet owners can pay for big-ticket lifesavers like veterinary interventional radiology, while others have to give up on their beloved pets because they can’t foot the bill. VIN News Service has a piece up about an altruistic example of veterinary doctors following human-medicine doctors’ example: The birth of veterinarians without borders, which offers basic vet services to underserved populations:

Under the auspices of Veterinarians Without Borders, a livestock veterinarian and a small-animal practitioner will spend nearly three weeks in Liberia next month looking for ways to help the West African country rebuild following 14 years of civil war and unrest.

When they arrive, Drs. Arlene Gardsbane and Beth Miller will be the only practicing veterinarians in the entire country.

“War wiped everything out,” said Gardsbane. She speculated that some Liberians with veterinary degrees left their country during the prolonged strife and are settled elsewhere now.

Gardsbane and Miller, who were classmates in veterinary school at Louisiana State University, will take to Liberia some basic tools, including rabies vaccines and dewormer, and plan to hold a one-day clinic in the capital city of Monrovia, but their main purpose is to assess the country’s needs and develop a plan to promote the health of the people, their pets, livestock and wildlife through veterinary medicine.

The veterinarians learned of Liberia’s needs from Gardsbane’s brother-in-law, Paul Sully, an international development specialist in Maryland who spent time in Liberia in the 1970s as a Peace Corps volunteer. One of Sully’s long-time friends from that period is Joseph Boakai, who later served as Liberia’s minister of agriculture and is today the country’s vice president.

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