Vet students Elizabeth, Ragnhild, Charlotte and Thea gives an update on the progress of their work in Malawi
The first five weeks in Malawi have really flown by! It has been hectic, but we have learnt a lot, met many dedicated people and done some exploration over the weekends.
Hannah Joan Jørgensen (NVI), one of our supervisors, accompanied us the first week. She introduced us to the lovely staff at the Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL). Dr. Joseph Nkhoma (Deputy Officer in Charge, CVL) gave us a warm welcome and a tour of the premises. We also visited Lilongwe Society for the Protection and Care of Animals (LSPCA) where Eveline Sibindi Van Dam (CEO, LSPCA) gave us an introduction to the organisation and how they work to improve animal welfare in Lilongwe and Malawi as a whole.
One of our classmates, Thea Heimstad Kleiven, arrived on the 9th of March and has been helping out on various aspects i.e. conducting interviews and transcribing our focus group discussions. Elin Trettenes, a bio engineer from NVI, spent the first four weeks with us. She helped Elizabeth and Charlotte prepare for the laboratory work by setting up the qPCR-machine and analysing some of the (old) rabies-positive brain samples stored at CVL. In addition, she has trained some of the staff at CVL to do qPCR. We were also accompanied by veterinarian Marie Krosness the first three and a half weeks of our stay. She’s currently doing her Master’s in epidemiology in France and is collaborating with NVI for her thesis on the milk chain in Malawi.
Our second week in Malawi was not as joyful. A tropical cyclone, Freddy, hit Southern Malawi on March 12th: 676 have been reported dead and over half a million are internally displaced (as of March 30th). Livestock has also been heavily affected with nearly 200 000 dead. We were lucky to be staying in Lilongwe which was only affected through poor power and water supply. We were able to charge our computers between power shortcuts and managed to get some work done. We also spent a day with Edson Chiweta (rabies officer, LSPCA), exploring some of the rabies hot spots in Lilongwe where we got to meet two vaccinators and one of the community leaders.
The week after was very eventful. On Tuesday, March 21st, LSPCA offered to take us to Dedza for a donkey castration campaign. We were quite a big group consisting of LSPCA staff, two UK vets from Veterinary Education Malawi and three other veterinary students volunteering with LSPCA for two weeks. The vets instructed us on how to castrate and administer and monitor anesthesia in donkeys in field conditions. LSPCA also kindly let us participate in a rabies vaccination campaign in connection with a confirmed rabies case.
The following day, we executed our first focus group discussion, interviews and rabies sampling presentation with assistant veterinary officers (AVOs) in Lilongwe. Veterinary pathologists Bjørnar Ytrehus and Malin Reiten from the NVI were at CVL this week, and they held the rabies sampling presentation.
Since then, we have executed another two focus groups in Dedza and Mzuzu, and will be going to Thyolo for the last group in a couple of weeks’ time. In Mzuzu, we also met with Mr. Gilbert Banda, founder of Centre for Community Empowerment Initiatives (CCEI). In 2020, they sourced rabies vaccines to 22,000 dogs, and cats, in the area.
We haven’t been working allthe time, though. We have, among other things, been to Dedza Pottery and Lodge for a hike, Kuti Wildlife Reserve and Salima to see Lake Malawi. On our way back from Mzuzu, we drove by the lakeshore. Malawi is a beautiful country and we are very much looking forward to exploring other areas, as well as getting to know Lilongwe, where we are based, even better.
All the best,
Elizabeth, Charlotte, Thea and Ragnhild.