6 December 2005
Celebrity vet Scott Miller is launching a £100,000 Brooke emergency appeal to stave off a winter disaster that threatens to engulf Pakistan’s earthquake survivors and the working animals on which they depend.
Scott, resident vet on This Morning and The Paul O’Grady Show, has just returned from Balakot in devastated north-west Pakistan where he worked alongside Brooke vets to help ease the appalling plight of families and their working animals following October’s earthquake catastrophe.
The Brooke is Britain’s biggest overseas equine welfare charity and Scott worked with one of three emergency veterinary teams that Brooke has established in the region. A fourth will soon be in operation.
Our veterinary teams are struggling to ease the tide of animal misery in the region as a brutal winter approaches - as well as the quake’s human casualties more than 500,000 animals died and 12 million were injured by the quake, according to figures just released by Pakistan’s livestock department.
Many of these animals are working horses, mules and donkeys on which families depend for their livelihoods. Scott Miller says: “These animals are so vital that many owners are now using rubble from their homes to build shelters for them, while they and their families will face winter snows in tents. The animals are the key to economic recovery for these people and the appeal funds will be used to fund the provision of shelters, shelter building materials and fodder for animals as well as to fund the work of Brooke’s mobile veterinary teams in the area.”
The London-based vet volunteered to help after hearing about a life-saving “donkey train” that the Brooke organised last month to ferry desperately needed food and medicines to victims stranded in remote regions. The Brooke now has mobile veterinary units offering free care for working animals in Balakot and at another location badly hit by the quake Garhi Dupatta, near Muzaffarabad.
Footage and photographs of Scott working with Brooke vets in Pakistan are available. To view pictures click here
Editors Notes:
The Brooke teams of highly specialised mobile vets work in Pakistan, and across six other countries in the developing world, to improve the health and welfare of hundreds of thousands of working horses, donkeys and mules - animals that form the much of the backbone of economies for countless poor communities. The Brooke’s main thrust of its operations is providing free veterinary care and education programmes via a network of mobile units.
Working animals and livestock are among the only possessions that many of the earthquake victims have left. The well being of these working animals will be of crucial importance as those devastated by the earthquake struggle to rebuild their lives, and they must be helped quickly with winter fast closing in. If their working animals can be returned to good health it will give the quake victims a chance to earn a living again.
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